


Less Is More

by acmac, StrictlyReading



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, So much angst, Torture, also angst, because suffer they must, i love them why must they suffer, no sexytimes tho, rinch if you want
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-04-28 03:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5075707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acmac/pseuds/acmac, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrictlyReading/pseuds/StrictlyReading
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Reese and Finch are reminded that they made deadly enemies long before Samaritan went online. Maybe more. Maybe less.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Simplicity

_o\O/o_

“Simplicity,” said the gentle voice at John's side. “Simplicity. Do you know Longfellow? He said that ‘many a poem is marred by a superfluous word.’ Chopin called simplicity ‘the crowning achievement of art.'" The man sighed. “I’m not sure either was the best follower of his own advice, to be honest.”

John couldn’t see the tall, thin man standing beside him; the injection had effectively reduced his muscles to the consistency of wet cement. But he wouldn’t have turned to look even if he could. His eyes were riveted on a large TV screen situated high on the wall, tilted toward his face at a 45-degree angle. The room was dim, the leather of the chair warm beneath his limp neck.

 _Like a sports bar,_ John thought muzzily. _Only with zip ties._

On the screen played taped footage of Finch strapped firmly into a hospital bed in a large bare room somewhere — a warehouse or basement, John suspected. The headrest of the bed was gently elevated, therapeutic foam pillows propped supportively around Finch's still form. None of this hid the painful twist of his mouth, the sweat standing out in beads on his pale face. The image of the man who now stood beside John entered the frame, his slim figure dressed in green scrubs. Slim swapped out the IV bag draining into Finch’s left forearm and gave the new bag a good squeeze. Finch shivered violently against his restraints.

“This was filmed just over three hours into forced rapid detox. Your friend is—was—on an interesting cocktail of medications. Not surprising." Slim flicked a remote at the screen. Unmuted, the recording flooded the room with shallow, whimpering pants. "I'd prefer to let withdrawal occur naturally, but we're on a pretty tight timetable." A hint of disapproval colored Slim's professional tone. "There's still a lot left on the checklist." He reached up absently to swipe a checkmark over the image of Finch's face. The image pixelated slightly where his finger had touched the plasma screen, blurring Finch's agony for a few seconds.

"At least I assume he's your friend," Slim added as an afterthought.

Eventually the drugs began to wear off; after a deep effort John managed to roll his head sloppily forward and open his mouth.

"Wha… d'you... want?"

"What do I want?" Slim moved smoothly to crouch in front of John, his pale eyebrows furrowed over deep-set, earnest eyes. "I want to do my job, Detective Riley. That's what I've been trying to tell you. You shouldn't take this personally. It's my client who wants to hurt you. And they seem to think this," he gestured toward the screen, "is the easiest way to do it."

He stood, reaching to ready another syringe. John briefly felt deft fingers in the crook of his arm. Then there was a click and the TV screen went dark. A warm voice carried John softly into sleep.

"I guess my client appreciates simplicity, too."

 

_o\O/o_

 

 


	2. Elegance

Harold Finch had never understood men who hated wearing suits. Men who chafed at layers and double inseams and, above all, the tyranny of the necktie. Of course Finch realized that his own outright _enjoyment_ of formalwear put him in the minority — personally, he would walk around in a cravat and stovepipe hat if he thought he could get away with it — but the petty whining of many men against the rank injustice of _adult clothing_ was just... childish.

Finch had been wearing grey cashmere when the two thickset men plucked him off the street. The cufflinks: silver and onyx. The tie: 3.5-inch width, double Windsor knot, silk _charvet_ in vivid jewel greens (a sparse pattern of tiny blue-grey diamonds muted the color from a distance, but up close its peacock vibrancy was striking).

It was one of Finch’s favorite ties. Moreover it had been a gift from Nathan. And Grace had said it brought out his eyes.

But at this particular moment he would have cheerfully hacked it from his neck with a chainsaw and set it afire if only— _oh_ God _if only_ —it meant he could _breathe_.

There was no telling how long he’d been strapped to the bed. Long enough to miss at least two doses of medication, he reckoned—which meant that now there was no telling the temperature of the room, either, nor the brightness of its lighting, nor even the color of its walls. All his six senses could register now was pain. The brush of cashmere was sandpaper against his skin, the weight of his Italian leather wingtips intolerable.

Some time ago he had first woken up to a catheter insertion: an all-but forgotten sensation that came screaming back to memory before he promptly passed out again. There was another brief awakening some time later. In the dim light, _sans_ glasses, he didn’t even realize he was awake—until he was suddenly vomiting into a metal bowl held by a steady hand, another hand cool against the nape of his neck, holding him in place. His skin had prickled at the touch.

After retching up what felt like every ounce of spare fluid in his digestive tract, the strong arms had laid him back again against the hospital bed headrest and depressed its angle to a gentle 15 degrees. As his was lowered helplessly Finch noticed a brush of plastic—an IV tube running into his restrained left arm.

Expert fingers had replaced his glasses, adjusting them just-so on his ears. A face came into focus: close-cropped hair of indeterminate color; dark eyes whose gaze slid away from his own; a broad, bony nose. The man’s arms, bare beneath the short sleeves of his green scrubs, were bony too—a surprise after feeling their steady steeliness. Finch immediately named him Armstrong in his head and choked out a hysterical laugh.

And that was when the shakes began.

_o\O/o_


	3. Precision

 _o\O/o_

 

“Do you know how they happened, Detective Riley? The injuries?”

Slim didn’t seem to expect an answer. He sat next to John in the warm windowless space John had pegged as a half-finished basement. The leather chair was snuggled up to the television screen in the corner furthest from the stairs, thick area rug underfoot, overhead lamp and file cabinet to one side. Everything was comfy and well used—everything but the cheap plastic stool where Slim now perched, tapping a pencil against his teeth, eyes fixed on Finch writhing uselessly on the screen. Every now and then Slim made a _hmm-_ ing noise and wrote something down in his notebook. He had an air of diligence, like a dedicated student doing his homework.

Finch’s collar was wilted and dark with dried sweat, his suit lapels a squashed mess under the shoulder restraints. Squirming against the hip strap had his glossy black — _"Aubergine,_ Mr Reese," the Harold in John's mind corrected — waistcoat riding up; John knew the indecorous display of rumple-shirted belly must be maddening to whatever small part of Finch’s brain wasn’t busy being terrified.

John had no way of knowing how old the current footage was; could be hours, could be days. From the growth of his own beard he knew he was 48-72 hours post-capture. But thanks to Finch’s fussy grooming habits, he had no frame of reference for the thinner stubble visible on his employer’s jaw, straining to talk through chattering teeth.

“Please. My name is Harold Crane. I don’t know why I’m here. Why are you... what do you want? Please tell me, please just— _say_ something. I, _ungh,_ I  have money. I have money, a lot of it, I swear. Let me go, and you— _ahhh,_ oh _god_ —you can, all of it, whatever you, however much you want. Whatever you want. _Please_ say something...”

A long time ago, one undercover mission had required John develop a heroin habit. It was only a few months, and the subsequent withdrawal had been miserable enough. But he’d had no real need of the drugs in the first place, no years of pain to muzzle, no metal in his bones to turn to cold fangs in the marrow—

“ _Say_ _something,_ god _dammit!”_

The man on the screen said nothing. He checked Finch’s pupil response, felt his pulse. Then he placed one finger against Finch’s temple and _pushed._ As his neck bent slowly, inexorably to the side, Finch’s gasp gave way to sobs of _please no stop stop please stop_ NO _—_ until finally his left ear touched his left shoulder, and he _screamed._ Once, then again. The third scream ended abruptly and he went mercifully limp against the bed.

Slim was scribbling furiously in his notebook. He finished and flicked off the TV.

“I’d assume something ordinary like a car crash for the original trauma,” he said lightly to John. “Though you and your friend sure don’t seem like the _ordinary_ type. Still, spinal injury and second-degree burns: classic auto-collision. But the _second_ incident was probably—”

“Second ins’dent?” John's head was rolling on his neck, now that there was no image of Finch to anchor it in place. He had promised himself he wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t give his captor the satisfaction. But Slim didn’t seem to care either way, and Harold was hurting somewhere, had _been_ hurting all along, and John needed to _know._

“Oh yes. You didn’t know?”

John bared his teeth at the ceiling: it was almost a smile.

“He’s a very private person.”

“Oh. I had kinda figured...” Slim made a vague gesture with his pencil. “But uh, anyway, yeah, there are two discrete sets of surgical scars: different procedures performed by different doctors. The second doctor was better. Much better. Taking your friend’s demographics into account, I don’t think I’ve ever seen better mobility after multiple pelvic fractures. The spinal fusion was downright poetic. But all _that_ happened afterward.”

Slim was warming to his subject. His accent wasn’t uptown, his vocabulary wasn’t particularly educated. _Not a doctor,_ John found himself thinking. _But not an amateur, either._

“I bet your friend didn’t take the time to fully heal from the first uh, car-crash or whatever. You see that a lot—in workaholics, especially: patients taking things too fast, slacking on their PT, and then,” Slim snapped his fingers. “Boom. A second incident. Usually a fall.”

“But something a lot more violent happened to your friend, I’d say—an assault, maybe. Or another, very bad, accident. _That’s_ when all the pins had to go in. And there was no rushing convalescence that time; nothing like a crushed pelvis to ensure patient compliance.” He snapped his notebook shut and stood, stretching. “Chow time, Detective.”

Slim went to the wall and pulled a water bottle and a _BoostPlus_ shake from the dusty bulk-buy packages on the floor. He poured both into a Big Gulp cup, added a precise measurement of a white powder, and held it up to John’s mouth. Sucking it down, John made a list of the ways he could use the straw between his teeth to kill the deceptively frail man before him. Quick ways, slow ways, clean ways and messy ones, painless or awful, gruesome, _excruciating_ —he would get a lot more than _three_ screams out of Slim before _he_ passed out, by _God_ —

Suddenly he realized he was slurping nothing but vanilla-flavored air through the straw. He stopped and Slim threw the empty cup away, blinking at him curiously.

“I’ve never... had a job quite like this before,” he said quietly, almost shyly. “Nobody else has ever been down here, actually. You’re in my chair.” He laughed awkwardly and tapped the already-tilting stool with his toe. “I should probably get another one.”

“You c’n have your shair back f’you stop this.”

Slim smiled, shaking its head. “It’s losing lumbar support, anyway. The human body is a miraculous thing, you know. It does the work for me, really; all I have to do is create the right conditions. That’s never been more true than with your friend there. His own body, his own mind, his past, his relationships,”—he nodded at John—“his biochemistry, even his own _clothes._ They _prepared_ him for this. All I need to contribute now is the touch of a finger.”

He gazed at his own hand reverently for a moment.

“My client didn’t tell me much about you, Detective Riley. But I think I have a pretty good idea. You weren’t always a cop, were you? And I’m sure you were very good at your job. But, one professional to another, I hope you can see that there are certain advantages to doing things _my_ way.”

  

_o\O/o_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Reviews are hearts and rainbows. :)


	4. Restraint

_o\O/o_ 

 

He hated himself immediately afterward, but when Armstrong released the straps pinning his left arm to the bed Finch couldn’t help but gasp out a startled _“thank you.”_

When the hip, knee, and left ankle straps came off too, all he could manage was a grateful groan. The fever chills had passed — one less thread in the web of pain that was again becoming home — but his skin still felt raw, acidic; the cool air now gentling the newly unbound spots was too much, too fast. He was almost relieved that the right wrist and ankle restraints remained.

The IV tube and catheter were gone. At least he hadn’t been awake for that. Finch barely had time to hope it hadn’t been long enough for bedsores to start before Armstrong leaned in close and his thoughts scattered like pigeons. Looking the man in the eye was unthinkable; Finch’s eyes skimmed around Armstrong’s hairline until they were drawn downward by the wink of metal: a stethoscope hanging from Armstrong’s neck.

_That’s new._

Finch blinked against the reflected light and licked his sore lips.

“I very much hope that this means you—”

His breath was abruptly huffed out of him when Armstrong rolled Finch toward himself, onto his right side. He yelped; Armstrong slipped the stethoscope into his ears and caught Finch under the jaw with one steely hand. His other arm circled around and braced along Finch’s spine, elbow in the small of his back, fingers at the nape of his neck. Then Armstrong sighed out two long, breathy pants. Finch startled and he began to struggle, previously-unconsidered possibilities shrieking through his mind, until he felt the touch of metal—warm from Armstrong’s breath—at the base of his skull. Ah. The stethoscope.

Using the hand cradling his jaw, Armstrong slowly pivoted Finch’s head this way and that, listening intently. The motions were subtle at first, almost soothing. Not unlike physical therapy, in fact. Finch remembered all the admonishments to _relax,_ to _breathe through_ the little clicks of metal and bone, and found himself falling back into those patterns.

Then Armstrong found a familiar sticking point—a catch in the rotation, where one surgical pin was slightly longer than the other. His long hands went still, perfectly still, long enough for Finch to feel his skull become almost weightless in that deft grip. Then both thumbs pressed into the hollow behind his right ear and shoved.

Finch gagged as the titanium in his neck, unable to bend with the spine, began to grind into it. His free arm flailed against Armstrong’s side, half nerve spasm, half self-defense. His free leg had locked at the knee, useless.

Armstrong held him down until his flopping arm subsided into twitching. Then he dropped Finch’s head like a hot rock and stepped away, walking around to the other side of the bed. He reached for the locked knee and Finch squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to know what would happen next. Maybe it would be easier if he didn’t see it coming.

Unhurriedly, Armstrong probed and listened, mapping out each of the eleven pins and six plates holding Finch’s spine and pelvis together. Testing their range of motion, how much pressure it took to push the audible friction from unpleasant to obscene.

During the moments when he could think, Finch thought about carpentry projects in the workshop-barn with his father. He thought of the protesting creak of wood while pulling out an ill-hammered nail; of overworked drill-holes that stripped the threads off screws and left them rattling pointlessly, good for nothing but the scrap heap.

Over and over Finch felt himself circling the drain of consciousness, but Armstrong always pulled him back from the brink just in time. Until finally one especially shrill _twist_ hit some sort of tuning fork of agony in Finch’s brain. The ringing in his ears met the creeping blackness before his eyes, and together they pulled him down, down, down into the dark.

 

 

_o\O/o_ 

 

“I’m not a killer, Detective, please believe that. It’s a non-negotiable point of my contract: no killing. So. If everything plays out like it should, you will get your friend back when this is all over. Here’s how that works: I let you loose down here and _then_ _you stay_ until I say you can leave. Sure, you could bust your way out, easy. I know enough about you to know that, injections or no, restraints or no, it’s only a matter of time before I make a mistake and you kill me with your teeth or something.”

John blinked. He’d made a list of ways to do that, too.

“So I’d rather do it this way. And to be honest, I don’t like all this fuss.” Slim waved disdainfully at the zip ties, the jar of powdered constipating medication, the Big Gulp cups (one for what went in, one for what went out).

“The reason you will stay here and do what I say is very simple. There are two men outside the door where I’ve got your friend, and their only function is to wait for me to check in with them at precisely scheduled times. If at any time, for any reason, I fail to do that? My contract with my client is voided. Truth be told, I’m not sure exactly what that would mean for your friend. But it would be better not to find out, I think."

Slim prepared the injection, then waved it in John's face to punctuate his next words.

“So, I’m going to give you one last shot. When you wake up the ties will be gone. Help yourself to water, shakes. The toilet’s down that little hall; the thermostat’s at the top of the stairs. The fuse box is up there, too, by the way, but I’m sure hoping you’ll take what I’ve said to heart. I’ll be back later with some new footage. We’ll go on as before for a while longer. Then I give you a phone, drive away, and text you an address. And you go get your friend. Simple. So you see, Detective, unlike you, I am not a killer.”

And damned if John doesn’t _believe_ him.

“That would defeat the whole purpose, anyway — would be, quite frankly, a waste of my time. What’s the point, where’s the _challenge,_ in taking something apart, if you don’t mean to put it back together again?”

 

 

_o\O/o_ 

 

When Finch came to, everything was different—different in a way he was too dizzy to put his finger on right away. He blinked, found a stain on the ceiling to anchor his gaze and let the vertigo and nausea recede. As his head cleared he realized: the restraints were gone. All of them.

His thousand-dollar shoes hit the floor before he knew what he was doing. Next was the tie; he reached to rip it off completely but lingering vertigo sent his hand crashing into his nose instead of up to his throat. After a moment’s pause he tried again and settled for loosening it and popping the top buttons off his collar. The buttons of his waistcoat took considerably longer. His shirt was half-untucked from Armstrong’s ministrations; Finch finished the job.

He was finding the least painful way to arrange his arms when his eyes landed on the door. The locked door.

Because surely it must be locked, of course.

Of course.

And yet.

Slowly, so slowly, he shifted himself to the side, using his shoulders as ballast to swing his good leg off the edge of the bed. Balancing on the precipice, he sucked in a deep breath. He was under no illusions about _standing_ and _walking_ over to the door. But in recent years he’d had plenty of experience in how to execute a controlled fall. Still, he tucked his glasses into his breast pocket, just in case.

It was not a controlled fall.

When he came to again, he had the wits to start moving immediately after replacing his glasses, pushing against the cement floor with his good leg, pulling with his elbows. He was _angry_ and he used every scrap of it to get to the door.

The locked door.

Of course.

He dropped, did his best to melt into the cold floor, cursed the familiar _damned-if-you-move, damned-if-you-don’t_ dance of musculoskeletal pain. He braced one shoulder slightly against the wall, his legs lying directly in the door’s path. If he was lucky, maybe Armstrong would trip over them when he came back.

But hours went by, and nothing happened—nothing except cold, and hard, and colder, and harder. His eyes kept drifting back to the hospital bed, which he now saw was rather thicker and softer than standard issue. The restraints, too: they were smooth, padded—more like what you’d find in a kink shop than an ambulance. Suddenly Finch’s neck spasmed, hard; he realized he’d been unconsciously leaning toward the bed.

_No._

He looked away and started reciting the digits of _pi._ It was his custom in times of tribulation. Sometimes it worked.

But only sometimes.

It took him twice as long to crawl back as it had to crawl away. And then there was the Everest-like adventure of actually getting back _into_ the bed. When he finally succeeded and spread himself out, sweating, his body fitted neatly back into the shallow imprints it had already made for itself in the foam mattress, and his eyes were streaming tears — only a few of them were from the pain.

Then the door opened.

 

_o\O/o_ 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Reviews are sunshine and daffodils. :)


	5. Purity

 

_**Huge thanks to StrictlyReading for betaing!** _

 

_o\0/o_

 

There was something profoundly _wrong_ about the sight of Finch wearing hospital scrubs. John allowed himself the barest fraction of a thought imagining Finch’s struggles against Slim’s grip were just a spirited debate about fashion. A dapper man’s rebellion against being forcibly swathed in such a cheap fabric of such a garish green.

“He’s a stubborn one,” Slim told John.

“You have no idea.”

For the first time, Slim hadn’t changed out of his own green scrubs before coming down to the basement to watch the show with John. He was fresh from the shower, as always. Either he was as fussy a groomer as Finch, or he was washing away some identifiable smell from wherever Harold was being held.

The time was somewhere between 2 and 4pm, John estimated. The day Slim had stopped dosing him with sedatives, John had climbed the basement’s rickety wood staircase and dialed the thermostat down to zero. As the hours ticked by, he had carefully monitored the changes in air temperature, and now had a decent gauge of night, morning, and afternoon.

While at the top of the stairs, he had stared for a long time at the closed door there. He’d tried the antique glass knob: locked, but cheap, rattling—a good twist with his bare hand was probably all it would take. No need of tricks from his special skillset. Slim’s idea of a joke, maybe.

He’d examined the fuse box too; its design was thirty or so years old, but the house itself was considerably older, judging from the poor insulation and the rough pouring of the cement floor which John suspected covered original flagstones.

An old farmhouse, probably.

Something upstairs hummed and clanked constantly—John doubted it was anything with a legitimate purpose. More likely some sort of white-noise machine, a plant by Slim to disguise any traffic sounds that might bleed through from outside.

So, an old farmhouse long since absorbed into a growing suburb.

Probably.

Wherever Finch was being held was more... generic. A roomy space; low ceiling, bare walls. Clean. Kept at a comfortable temperature, likely at considerable expense. Florescent lighting. High-end security camera. Part of some larger building or complex, but somewhere no one would hear the screaming. Somewhere off the grid, abandoned. Somewhere like their Library and Subway headquarters.

Somewhere they once would have relied on the Machine to find for them, and guide them through, whispering in Root’s ear while Finch whispered in John’s, Shaw along for the ride—maybe eavesdropping on the whispers, maybe not, equally deadly either way.

But the Machine was on life-support in the Subway, Shaw was god knows where, and those two facts had Root's eyes burning so hot that John had taken to resting a casual hand over his weapon any time she got within three feet of Harold. Which, considering they were spending nearly every waking minute with their heads together over a motherboard, was often. Finch had spoken excitedly of nearing a breakthrough. The next day, John woke up in a basement.

He had seen hours and hours of footage, now. Always with Slim at his side. Since being untied John had refused to sit in the low leather club chair while they watched; he stood at ease, back straight and eyes front. Slim always offered the chair, then took it himself with a shrug. If he noticed how John stood a little too close, looming over him and breathing malice, he didn’t show it.

Watching Finch wake up after having his own restraints removed, John had known exactly what was about to happen.

 _Stay,_ he wanted to say. _Just stay._

Instead, John had watched Finch fall, breaking himself down even further in a slow crawl toward the door—the locked door. Locked with steel and electricity; worlds better than the one in John’s basement. The punchline on the joke.

Finch had endured the cold cement for a long time, his lips forming silent numbers in an endless stream.

“He did that the whole while he was on the floor,” Slim remarked, pushing the fast-forward button. “Do you know what he’s saying?”

John had a pretty good idea, but he didn’t answer.

“Ah, here we go,” Slim said, and slowed to play.

And there it was: the inevitable moment when Finch turned back, defeated. John’s own eyes stung but he cudgeled that weakness ruthlessly—he couldn’t afford to miss anything; blurring up his vision wouldn’t do Finch any good—as he watched the aching, weeping man crawl back slowly, so very slowly, and submit himself again to the padded prison of Slim’s hospital bed. Like a dog coming to heel.

 _You didn’t have a choice,_ John told him in his mind. _Not really. You did what you had to. What anyone would have done._

_Trust me, I know._

And then, just as Finch had settled himself—before he could even complete a slow, deep breath—Slim had walked briskly back into the room, wheeling a battered metal kitchen trolley. Big, curved scissors sat in a tray on top—John’s nostrils flared and he started forward involuntarily. Scissors, unlabeled plastic packages, a tall Styrofoam cup of unknown contents: these so riveted John’s attention that he didn’t notice the neatly folded set of green scrubs sitting innocently beside them.

Finch was doing his best to get a look at the trolley, too, but Slim was keeping it just beyond his turn radius. Finch had laid himself in a tense, asymmetrical sprawl, favoring his bad hip and propping his neck with one hand, fingers cradling the ruined vertebrae there. Powerful spasms were running through his leg. As Slim’s tall frame leaned over him his arm started shaking too, but he offered no resistance when a bony hand went to his throat and zipped his necktie away through his collar. Slim ran his thumb over the patterned silk a few times, then slung it around his own neck.

“I would like to know why you are keeping me here,” Finch blurted, and though his voice was rough and quavery with thirst and fear, John noted with approval a glimmer of Finch’s flat, _do-be-reasonable_ haughtiness shining through. “If you would just tell me, I’m sure we could come to some sort of— _mmph!”_

Snake-quick, Slim had gripped him by the shoulder and hip pocket and rolled him neatly over onto his face. His bent arm rolled right along too and was pinned under his chest in a wrenching, reverse half-Nelson. Finch writhed feebly, small cries muffled against the mattress. He was almost certainly hyperventilating, John thought. His thrashing had weakened already; it wouldn’t take him long to smother himself in the bed's padding.

Slim had the scissors in his hand, and in a flash of metal sheared straight up the back-seam of Finch’s suit jacket. He put the scissors between his teeth and rolled Finch over again. John was relieved to hear gasping breaths as Slim peeled one half of the jacket off his shoulder and down his arm. The other half didn’t come as easy; a violent spasm had Finch’s arm seized up, still pinned against his chest even though the weight was off it. Slim gave the offending elbow an experimental wobble—Finch whimpered, his entire scapular region sliding back and forth: the elbow was completely immobilized, the shoulder nearly so. So Slim pressed one hand against Finch’s ribcage, curled the other around his quivering bicep, and pried the two forcibly apart. Finch's body juddered impotently under the pressure for a long moment before his arm finally sprang free, pressing whatever air was left in his lungs out in a long, wheezing huff _._

John thought Finch had fainted; he didn’t move or make a sound as Slim stripped away his jacket, waistcoat, socks, and shirt, folding each item neatly and stacking them on the bottom shelf of the trolley. But when his belt was unbuckled, Finch stirred and put up a token fight. Slim allowed his hand to be pushed away; then he slipped it under the small of Finch’s back and pulled his spine up into a steep arch. Finch’s arm dropped like a shot bird.

With his other hand Slim shucked the soft grey trousers down Finch’s hips and added them to the growing pile of very expensive, very dirty laundry on the bottom shelf of the trolley. Then he ran the scissors up through a side seam of Finch’s boxers, nipped through the waistband, and continued up to the collar of his undershirt. He didn’t open or remove the cloth; instead he dropped the scissors back onto the tray with a rude _clang_ and flicked one of the brick-sized plastic packages onto Finch’s chest. The trolley squeaked as he rolled it to the foot of the bed.

He returned to Finch’s side and looked down at him speculatively. Finch turned his head a fraction, and met Slim’s stare as steadily as his tremors and bloodshot eyes would allow. Slim mimicked the tilt of Finch’s head, then slowly reached out and took away his glasses. He breathed hot fog onto both sides of each lens and polished it away again with the green tie still draped around his neck. He settled them gently back onto Finch’s pale face, and then he turned on his heel and left.

Finch didn’t move for a long time. When his breathing evened out, his fingers crept down and found the corners of the package, exploring it tentatively for a moment before freezing in sudden recognition: bathing wipes. The kind used in hospitals for patients too ill or too injured to shower. Finch blinked, swallowed. Then, in painful stops and starts, he wormed out of his remaining scraps of clothing and attacked himself with the wet, astringent tissues. He used the entire bag, going over and over his skin until it was raw.  

Watching his friend’s self-punishing frenzy, John again cursed his inability to put a time stamp to the footage Slim played for him. There was no set schedule to their viewing parties, and there were always gaps between one video and the next. Knowing he was always a step—or several—behind Finch was eating him alive. His desperation to see Finch in real time wasn’t rational; but he was desperate for a sense that, somehow, they were in this thing together. That afterward, he could tell Finch that he’d been with him, right there, every step of the way. The way Finch was always there with John, even when an invisible microphone was the only tether between them.

Package empty, Finch subsided into stillness, looking almost restful. When Slim returned he was carrying a plastic bedside commode, and the lingering relief on Finch’s face turned to stone.

He set the commode perpendicular to the bed and reached out for Finch’s hand. A deep flush spread up Finch’s neck and down his arms, but he only hesitated a second before taking Slim’s offered hand. As if in reward, Slim was delicate about bringing Finch to a sit, supporting his neck, assisting the swing of his legs down to the floor, giving Finch a moment to gather himself before executing a perfect lift-and-pivot transfer to the plastic seat of the portable toilet. Then he placed a fresh, full package on Finch’s knee and discreetly left the room.

After relieving himself, Finch again used every last wipe to scrub himself down, leaving John wincing as the raw redness spread. Yelps escaped him regularly as he overreached his spine’s limits, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He dropped wipes to the floor and scuffed his feet against them, helping his bad leg along with one arm.

“Creative,” Slim commented to John. 

Most of the package went toward scrubbing at his hair, ears, and face. He even bunched up a little corner of one wipe and carefully squeaked away at each tooth, coughing at the taste but determined.

“And hygienic,” Slim added.

A squeak of wheels again heralded the door opening. This new thing Slim was pushing inside was large, unwieldy; it scratched and pinged against the doorframe despite Slim’s characteristic precision. John wasn’t sure what he was looking at—it looked like a cross between a home gym and a hydraulic mobility-aid body lift: there was a large central sling, big enough for a person. Various strange, strappy appendages were jury-rigged to its frame—medical traction devices, John realized with a pang.

Finch’s face blanched under the raw scrub he’d given himself, his bad foot rattling louder against the metal leg of the commode. Slim parked the apparatus in the middle of the room and locked down its six wheels with his foot. Then he returned to the bedside and swiped the set of green scrubs off the trolley.

“Listen,” Finch croaked, eyeing the apparatus. “Listen. You’re right, of course, I’m sure you know that my, my name isn’t r-really, ah, really Crane.”

Slim was crouching by Finch’s feet, scrunching up the legs of the scrubs into fat rings on the floor. Finch let out a little yip as Slim lifted his feet into them.

“Nor is it Whistler. Nor... Partridge?”

Finch was watching Slim carefully for a reaction; there was none.

“You see I... I have quite a few aliases, I admit. And I couldn’t honestly s-say that, that the activities of _all_ these identities are... _entirely_ legal, ah, in the very strictest sense—”

Finch’s voice was muffled as Slim manhandled him into the green shirt.

“—so perhaps,” he continued when his head popped out of the V-neck collar, glasses askew, “perhaps if you tell me which of my names your, ah, _complaint_ is in connection with, we can...can talk, we can discuss—”

Slim tilted Finch forward, pulled the scrub trousers up to his waist, and then carefully pulled him up and laid him out flat on the floor.

Finch lay mewling, his nose red and streaming, words lost to him as he stared up at the shiny metal arms hanging over him like a malevolent chandelier. Slim picked up the Styrofoam cup from the trolley, then sat cross-legged on the floor by Finch’s head and fed him ice chips from it.

“Please,” Finch whispered between one chip and the next, his voice growing stronger as his mouth was wetted. “Please.”

When there was nothing but water left in the cup, Slim drank it himself, then stood and puttered around the room, stuffing the cup with the crumpled wipes scattered on the floor.

“Please tell me what you want,” Finch was murmuring, almost as if to himself, eyes closed. “Whatever it is—anything. Anything. Tell me why. Please say something. Anything.”

Slim went to the device’s control panel, and pulled the lever to lower the body sling to the floor. One strap ghosted over Finch’s face as it descended, then slid off to gather near his ear.

“Now watch this,” Slim whispered to John, leaning forward eagerly, the bumps of his spine showing through the thin fabric of his shirt. John identified the most vulnerable junctures and imagined four different ways of snapping Slim in half.

The Slim on the screen reached for Finch’s shoulders, and Finch _lost_ it. He snarled and kicked, actually managing to knock Slim off balance for a split second. He recovered instantly, and swiftly bundled one of Finch’s legs into the sling. Finch’s fingernails were tearing at the fabric, his free foot doing its best to find somewhere on Slim to land.

“No!” He shouted, a sudden surprising depth and power in his voice. “ _NO!”_

Slim hit pause on the image of his hand closing around Finch’s throat.

“I’ve got to go,” he said blithely, “so we’ll continue later. But before I go, I’ve got something for you. You’ve been _very_ cooperative, and I bet you’re almost as eager to get out of that suit as your friend was.”

Slim stood and gently laid a third, pristine set of grass-green scrubs on the seat of the chair. He straightened and looked at John shyly. “See, I like to think of us three as sort of a team, in a way—”

And suddenly John knew exactly how to set a timeline to the events onscreen.

The first punch doubled Slim over and knocked him back a step; the second sent him straight into the floor, bleeding from the nose and mouth. John was on him, flipping him over, forearm at at his throat and knee poised at his groin. Slim immediately opened his hands in surrender.

“Tell me: exactly _how_ ‘cooperative’ do I need to be?”

Slim’s heavy brow furrowed thoughtfully, and he shifted minutely under John’s weight. “That’s a really good question, actually.” He licked slowly at his bleeding lip. “Um. As long as I’m still able to do my work... I guess any minor injuries sustained would not be in violation of the contract. Technically.”

John landed a punch to Slim’s groin and two more to the face before leaning down, breathing his next, dangerously soft words directly into Slim’s ear.

“Okay. But when this is over, when I get Harold back... I _will_ kill you.”

Slim looked up at him sadly, and nodded.

“I’d expect nothing else from you, Detective.”

 

_o\0/o_

 

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Reviews are whipped cream and cherries. :)


	6. Balance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to StrictlyReading for betaing! :)

_o\O/o_

 

 

It’s a common misconception, Finch’s doctors had said, that the human body operates on only five physiological senses. As he had worked—relearning how to walk, sit, stand, lift, turn—they had told him that in reality, depending on one’s criteria, there are anywhere between nine and twenty-one separate senses.

Widely agreed upon was _equilibrioception:_ the perception of gravity and ability to balance accordingly. Without it, one was in constant free-fall down the rabbit hole, forever sailing off the edge of the world. 

Closely related was _proprioception_ : the ability to locate the parts of one’s body in space, to tell where you ended and the rest of the world began. Without it, life was rather like starring in one’s own personal Picasso painting.

More controversial was _nociception:_ in a word, pain. Some scientists thought the perception of pain existed independently from the sense of touch. Others disagreed. No consensus in sight. Personally, Finch could go either way.

Armstrong had spent the better part of an hour suspending Finch horizontally, face-down in the middle of his homemade apparatus—this strange, altered body hoist. The central body sling, instead of cradling Finch hammock-style, was doubled once around his hips, right at the tipping point of his center of gravity, and stretched taut. Any false move either sent him tilting headlong or arching backwards, to be caught with a jolt by the other straps attached strategically to various junctures on his limbs.

Like the restraints on the now-gone hospital bed, these straps were wide, thick, faux-suede-padded; there would be no chafing, no bruising. Nothing to distract from the pure, precisely measured, continuous torque on each of the eleven screws and six plates holding him together.

And then there was the collar. Half neck-brace, half traction sling, the thing hung down from a short pulley system, strangling and stabbing him by turns. Resisting against it eased the sharp bite of titanium into bone but it also pressed against his airway, leaving him lightheaded in a matter of minutes. Relaxing into the restraints allowed him to breathe deeply, but it also sent each piece of metal shrieking against its skeletal mooring.

 _Turning and turning in the widening gyre_  
_The falcon cannot hear the falconer;_  
_Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,  
__Mere anarchy is... is loosed upon... upon..._   

Yeats—hadn’t Yeats died of a broken back? But wait, no: he’d died in old age, a senator and Nobel Laureate. An accident as a young man, then, that was it: fractured spine, ribs, pelvis... only... no, not him—Kahlo. He was thinking of Frida Kahlo, of course. One of Grace’s favorites. After the train accident, the great Mexican painter had spent the rest of her life in a steel corset, a metal exoskeleton to shield the crumbling column of her spine. Grace had told him Frida’s story after the ferry bombing, trying in her kindly way to give him hope for a full life even after the crippling injuries... except...

Except that wasn’t right. Grace didn’t know about the injuries, the surgeries, the scars—though he was having trouble remembering how that could be... she couldn’t possibly _not_ have noticed... not even _he_ could have hidden...

No. She had never seen the scars. He remembered now. She had left him. She had cried at the end; she had kept the book he’d used for the ring, had held it to her chest and wept—but she had still left. Since then, every so often, he would catch a glimpse of her near the house they had shared, but she had never noticed. Or she had pretended not to. Even now, all these years later, she couldn’t bear to look at him.

Finch sagged against the restraints, wetness dripping to the floor from his nose, his mouth. So tired. He was so tired. The flood of pain began to ebb, and a rushing sound drowned the sobbing noises in his ears.

He woke to a tender touch and a warm clean smell, familiar. He heard footsteps—the soft sounds of worn, paint-spattered loafers supporting a pair of slender ankles. A tether of long hair fell against the back of his neck. Long, red hair.

“Grace,” he breathed.

He shifted, wanting, _needing_ , to see her face. The movement sent him forward sharply, compressing his spine at the nape and stretching it at the small of his back; pain shut on him like the teeth of an animal trap. He gagged and pulled back, overcorrecting and jogging the whole weight of his suspended body against the collar. Bile spattered the floor beneath him, and he shook and whimpered, lost.

Then Grace laid another hand on him and he stilled, focusing on the feel of her fingertips at the nape of his neck. He took a steadying breath. She was right, of course. He didn’t need to see her face, any more than he’d needed to see the falling tendril of hair to know its color, or see the old shoes to recognize her footsteps. Somehow the collar was no barrier to her fingers; he clearly felt the soothing rub of her thumb against the hairline on the back his neck. Just as he’d felt it dozens of times before, from behind him in bed, or while he sat at his computer.

“It’s like someone drew it with a Sharpie,” she’d giggle, combing her fingertips over the stark, perfectly even hairline on his nape.

“I employ a set of hair clippers quite regularly.”

“Still, though.”

“And I thought you said Sharpies were ‘for noobs’.”

“Okay then: it’s like someone drew it with a _Staedtler_ ink-brush.”

His hair in general had been an endless source of amusement to her; she had sporadic, irresistible urges to touch it. She’d tried to explain the fascination once, after she had dropped her bedtime-reading book to scoot closer, cross-legged on the quilt. He’d submitted to her fond pats while she searched for words.

“It’s just so...” she said, her palms bouncing lightly against the straight, stickery ends. “So...”

“Absurd?” he’d prompted.

“Vertical,” she’d replied.

Before Grace, he hadn’t known he could enjoy the sense of touch— _mechanosensation_ —so much.

He wasn’t a complete naïf when they met—he had been to college, after all—and he’d usually found sex pleasant enough, if hardly worth the exorbitant amount of time and energy most people seemed to invest in its pursuit.

With Grace, though, the intimacy of skin-on-skin had been revelatory, and nothing short of intoxicating. He thoroughly enjoyed making Grace happy, and flattered himself that eventually, through observation and research, he had even been able to teach her a trick or two.

He was quite sure he’d never signed up for this, though.

These straps—he could barely move _,_ why couldn’t he _move_ —they didn’t hurt, exactly, but there was an unpleasant tingling and the lights were much too bright and—oh. Oh no, he’d been wrong: this did hurt. This wasn’t just uncomfortable or unsettling; this was _wrong_ , and this _hurt._ Grace’s hand was gone; he reached for it in his mind, but all he found were memories.

Their first morning, they had woken up smiling.

“I love your smile.”

“I love _your_ smile.”

They’d smiled some more.

“Our kids would have really cute teeth,” she’d blurted.

He’d kissed her.

A cramp was curdling in an outer muscle of his bad hip: the smallish, _tensor_ something-or-other—the one with the name like a Starbucks drink. It was overdeveloped on the left from hitching his leg out sideways with every step, so ordinarily a cramp there was no small matter. Granted it was presently the least of his worries, but he’d gotten good at isolating and relaxing it at will. And he needed to feel good at something at the moment.

He and Grace had met at a Starbucks for their first two dates. It seemed safe; it seemed to be what people did. They’d laughed afterwards when they’d realized neither of them liked coffee.

Now, Grace was not-drinking-coffee somewhere in Italy. Nowhere near... wherever this was. She wouldn’t be coming for him. He wouldn’t want her to. He was beginning to wonder about Mr Reese, though. He wasn’t even bothering to waste energy hoping John would just keep his head down and leave well enough alone; John would find him, or die trying. He sincerely hoped it would be the former.

But it had never taken this long before.

There were footsteps again—long-legged footsteps that trembled the metal arms suspending Finch’s suspended cage; he began to sway gently in midair. There was a click of a lock and the whisper of a draft as the door opened. Finch’s vision tunneled in on the dark spatter of mucus on the cement floor beneath him. His body was tensing, his breaths shallowing. His bones groaned, half relieved as they pulled themselves a little tighter together.

Armstrong walked toward him, deliberately lightening his step to ease the nauseous swaying. He stopped an arm’s length away, silent and still. Watching.

“This is about the Machine, isn’t it,” Finch said.

Armstrong said nothing. Finch closed his eyes.

“Please. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

 

_o\O/o_

 

_. . . ._

_“When this is over, when I get Harold back, I_ will _kill you.”_

_“I’d expect nothing else from you, Detective.”_

_. . . ._

John’s fists tightened fiercely around the bunches of Slim’s shirt he held in his hands. Slim took the hint and kept still when John let go and began patting him down.

“These regular check-ins you mentioned, to the—”

“To the armed men guarding your friend’s room?”

“Right. How do you contact them?”

Slim had nothing on him—no wallet, no keys, no phone. John started to check again, just to be sure.

“I can’t tell you that, Detective.”

John’s hand ghosted over Slim’s sternum.

“I can be pretty persuasive.”

Slim’s eyes widened. “Well, you’ll have to be. I’m due to check in soon, actually. Very soon. And I don’t think you’ll be able to convince me in time. You should really let me go now.”

There was no swagger in Slim’s voice; just earnest concern and the snuffle of a swelling nose. Sweat and blood had darkened the short, sandy hair on one side of his head.

John’s fingers settled above the metasturnum bone where Slim's ribs joined, and pushed down hard and slow until it creaked, right on the cusp of giving way. Slim gasped and started to struggle but John’s free hand settled around his throat—not squeezing, just a gentle warning. Slim stilled instantly.

“And what if I don’t let you go now?” John murmured.

Slim shook his head. “Well, I wouldn’t make the check-in in time. I don’t know exactly what would happen then—and I’d rather not find out, personally.”

Something was rubbing against the heel of John’s hand where it lay under Slim’s throat. He eased his hand off Slim’s ribcage and reached under the shirt, feeling for the anomaly. It was small, hard; he pulled down the collar to look. A white plastic disk, set into the skin just under the right collarbone. A hole in the middle to accommodate a large-bore IV drip.

A chemotherapy drip.

Slim smiled at John sadly.

“One way or another, Detective, this will be my last job.” Tears began to shine in his dark, deep-set eyes. “And I can’t tell you what a gift your friend is, what a comfort it is to finish my life’s work in such a meaningful way _._ So please, let me go do my job. Or don’t—and we’ll see what happens. But I promise you, there is no way I _help_ stop this project before I’ve decided it’s finished.”

He licked at his bleeding lip, and his wet eyes now burned with determination. “I won’t—I _can’t_ —allow you or anyone else to take this away from me. Please understand, please accept, that for now your friend—Harold—is _mine._ I’ll let him die before I give him up prematurely.” His voice had dwindled to a whisper. “Please don’t make me do that.”

John’s hands fell away from Slim’s throat and chest, but he made no move to back away from where he loomed over the body sprawled beneath him. Slim had to duck and cringe out from underneath him.

“Thank you, Detective.”

Slim got to his feet slowly, one hand pressed to the bleeding cut on his brow. He didn’t straighten up fully; the spot on his solar plexus where John’s thumb had dug deep would be bruised black for weeks. Or until he died. Whichever came first.

Rubbing at a twisted knee, Slim slowly made his way up the stairs. John’s eyes followed him, hard and glittering with the promise that he’d do everything he could to make sure the latter came first.

 

_o\O/o_


	7. Relevance

_o\O/o_

 

“Miss Groves has succeeded in de-fragging the hard drive; I’ve been working on decompressing the fundamentals, and the data outputs have become _quite_ promising—”

It was all Greek to John, but all Finch needed from him was a thoughtful nod, an encouraging noise now and then. And since it was the happiest he’d seen Finch in a long time, John was happy to let him ramble.

Even now, years after they’d met, the rare appearance of Finch’s smile could still surprise him—the sudden wide line of it, the way it split his face into shiny halves and instantly took ten years off him.

Finch had the knack—or, more likely, a cultivated habit—of keeping his face impassive, his voice alarmingly neutral. The way he could squeeze perfect diction out of barely moving lips was a trick worthy of a ventriloquist.

But when Finch smiled—or, even more rarely, when he lost his temper and shouted—you could see how elastic, how expressive, his face really was. How he could chew words up and spit them out, when he wanted to.

So it shouldn’t have surprised John, really, to see just how wide Finch’s jaw could stretch when he screamed.

For once, Slim wasn’t in the basement watching with him. John had been almost disappointed; he’d been looking forward to seeing his artwork on Slim’s face. But Slim had only opened the door and called down to him from the top of the stairs.

“Something’s come up for me tonight. Feel free to start without me! I’ve queued it up for you!” The door had shut and locked again before John could catch a glimpse of him—but he was gratified to hear the pronounced snuffle of an almost-broken nose in Slim’s voice.

Sure enough, when he turned around the TV screen had flickered blue, then resolved into a still image of Finch on the floor, Slim’s hand closing on his throat, under the rigged canopy of the tall, weird apparatus. John hesitated for a flat second: Slim _wanted_ him to watch this. _Wanted_ him to marvel and mourn as he watched his friend rigged up and immolated like a moth on a pin-board. A flame of rebellion flared in his chest—but it burned out almost immediately, leaving nothing behind but bitter smoke.

Of course he would watch. He had to watch. He had to _know_. He walked to the corner to stand at his usual place by the leather club chair, took up the remote and pressed play.

Slim bundled Finch’s good leg through a hole in the large body sling, then flipped him onto his front, looping the rest of the fabric around his hips. Finch was still yelling wordlessly, scraping at the floor with his good leg, loosening the sling’s hold. Slim stood up from a crouch, gripped Finch by the scruff of the neck and pulled him effortlessly back again into the center of the sling. Then he let him go. And waited. Finch struggled away again in a sad, one-legged crawl; Slim pulled him back and let him go again, waiting patiently. After the fourth try Finch gave up and lay panting under the shadow of the contraption’s rigging. Exactly where Slim wanted him.

Unhurriedly, Slim adjusted the sling, smoothing the stretchy fabric into a wide, snug sash around Finch’s hips. Then he moved to the Rig’s control panel and threw a switch. There was a jingle of metal as the hydraulic stuttered once, then gentle creaks as the straps tightened and lifted Finch’s prone form, slowly, pulling his back into a steep arch. Finch grunted, biting back louder sounds, until finally his arms and legs left the floor, putting their full weight on his stretched spine. He began squirming, his limbs searching uselessly for something to push against or hold onto, _anything_ to relieve the pressure.

There was nothing there; John knew that Finch knew there was nothing there, that struggling would only make it worse. But it couldn’t be helped; the animal fear of the trap was irresistible.

Then Slim stepped closer. Finch reached for him like a lifeline, clutching his bony shoulder with the hand that could still grip, scrabbling clumsily with the leaden fingers of the other. Slim steadied him with a hand against his waist. They stood in a twisted embrace: Slim’s tall, narrow frame rock-steady, Finch’s arms shaking harder and harder as he fought to keep hold. Then Slim gently wormed away and began working with the Rig’s various auxiliary restraints, attaching them purposefully first to Finch’s arms and then his legs. Gradually Finch was pulled into a precarious, lopsided pose.

Suddenly it dawned on John: he knew how Finch held himself on bad days, how he favored his pained joints and compensated for his weaknesses. He knew what that looked like, and apparently Slim did too, because he was trussing Finch up in exactly the opposite way; a perfect mirror image.

Slim stepped back and ran a critical eye over his work. So far there was nothing supporting Finch’s neck; he was straining to keep it in line, but as the muscles tired his head drooped lower and lower. Slim ignored it and circled the Rig, examining it from all angles, pausing now and then to make minute adjustments. Finch’s whimpers faded as his larynx was folded, until he couldn’t produce sound anymore and, finally, couldn’t breathe at all. He bucked twice, hard, then a third time, more weakly. His good leg gave one last weary kick and Finch went still.

“No,” John keened, his face inches from the screen, eyes raking the image for movement. “You said. . . you _promised. . .”_

Unhurriedly, Slim plucked down a rounded piece of fabric which dangled above Finch's bowed head; there was a rip of Velcro and Slim eased it gently around the limp neck—a padded neck brace, attached by cords to a high bar. Slowly Slim pulled the cords tighter, lifting Finch’s head by degrees until suddenly the prone man convulsed and spluttered, each cough pitching up to a yelp at the end.

John blew out his breath and leaned his forehead against the TV screen, the knuckles of his clasped hands bruising into his lips, grateful.

Again, Slim circled the Rig. This time his hands roamed Finch’s body, testing the bones and muscles, sometimes slipping under the green cloth of Finch’s scrubs to probe more intimately. Finally satisfied, Slim gave Finch a playful little shove, then left him alone to swing.

When the nauseous motion finally settled, Finch fell into a kind of rhythm, shifting his weight slightly at regular intervals, easing the pressure before it could build up too much in any one place.

Back, left, right, left, front. Right, front, left, right, back.

Whenever he miscalculated, he was sent surging headlong or backward to be pulled up short with a jolt by the restraints. Sweat began to darken his hair again, stiffening the ends into quivering barbs. One particularly grievous error left Finch shuddering, gagging out curses under his breath. He allowed himself a brief fit of frustration: shrill whines and petulant thrashing against the straps. Then he relaxed and took five deep breaths.

Back. Right. Front. Left. Back.

Hours passed. John ignored the signals of his own body—to eat, drink, sleep. He huddled close to the screen with a sniper’s perfect stillness, watching. Nothing else registered. 

By unspoken agreement, John and Finch had never discussed the limp or the stiffness. Right away John’s playful curiosity had been piqued by any number of other, much more interesting, things about his new boss. Finch was so much more than a bad back and a fat wallet; Finch was dry wit and flashy waistcoats, a sweet tooth and old books and a truly alarming ability to wreak electronic mayhem. An ability made only slightly less frightening by the short leash of an uncompromising—and often inconvenient—conscience.

Right. Left. Back. Front. Back.

Back.

Back—

Finch wasn’t moving. John tensed, nostrils flaring, but soon he saw the rise and fall of steady breathing. Shallow, labored, but steady. John shifted his own weight, popped a knee and stretched his arms with a groan. The chair sat innocently beside him, inviting.

Not content with simply gifting John an entire apartment, Finch had insisted on furnishing it, too—making it a _home._ He’d kept it simple but comfortable, likely knowing that John would either never get around to it or, worse, do it up all _tacky._ Grand gestures were kind of Finch’s thing, but he had also shown a surprising talent for the anonymous, the unexpected—the downright whimsical.

“Who knew there was a Falafel-of-the-Month club,” Fusco had enthused, a dab of _tzatziki_ in the corner of his mouth. John didn’t have the heart to tell him that there probably wasn't—at least not until very, _very_ recently, when a certain eccentric investor had decided to sink a lot of money into a suicide venture. Not that the venture would actually fail until, oh, about two hours after Fusco’s 12-month membership was up.

“If you wanted to thank Lionel for taking that bullet on little Darren’s behalf, I’m sure a check would have worked just fine,” John had said later, back at the Library.

“The policies regarding police officers and bribery are exceedingly stringent, Mr Reese,” Finch had sniffed, not looking up from his computer.

But the most surprising thing about Finch ran much, much deeper _._

For good or ill, John was obedient by nature. He had accepted it long ago.

“You’re like me,” Hersh had said. “We don’t give orders. We execute them.”

“Speak for yourself,” John had answered.

But Hersh had only been half wrong. After Ordos, if he hadn’t chosen scotch and the cold stink of the streets, he might have ended up like Hersh: a joyless ghoul of a man, waiting to die at the whim of a superior and never be mentioned again.

Much as he’d accepted his own fundamental need to hand over his life and his loyalty to _someone,_ he had also accepted as fact that he’d never find anyone truly worthy of handing them over _to._ But he’d been wrong.

“...falcon... falconer...”

Finch’s voice was tiny, reedy. John dropped his arms out of the stretch and reached for the remote; his thumbnail cut into the rubber button as he turned up the volume.

“...center... senator...”

Senator? Was Finch trying to communicate? Was Senator Garrison involved somehow? Was he being held at a government center of some kind? Off the grid— _way_ off? But no; Slim was a civilian, an uncontrolled variable, totally unacceptable in an official mission.

“...Kahlo... hidden... no, left, gone... book... _left...”_

John nodded, suspicions confirmed. The words were nonsense; Finch was dreaming.

“Grace,” Finch said suddenly, _reverently_ , and John hit pause on reflex. This felt... intimate. Private. He swallowed. And blinked. And pressed play again.

“...Mmm... clippers... Sharpie... vertical _..._ smile _..._ mmm, _smile...”_

Finch sounded almost happy, and John was grateful for the respite, illusory though it surely was. He tilted his head, oddly soothed by the uncharacteristic dreaminess in his friend’s voice. Then:

“Mr Reese?”

He reached for the TV on impulse. “I’m here, Harold.”

“Mr Reese?”

His fingertips ghosted across the screen, warm and fuzzy with electricity.

“John?”

“I’m here. I’m coming for you. Hold on. Hold on. I’m coming.”

 

 

_o\O/o_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to StrictlyReading, the best thing since sliced bread.
> 
> Disclaimer: I know nothing about computers that first bit is probably stupid feel free to critique it...
> 
> Please review! Comments are green grass and butterflies. :)


	8. Reflection

 

_o\O/o_

 

All the blue chairs were taken. He sighed and resigned himself to a puce one. The smooth vinyl was still softened and warm from its previous occupant. He reclined the back slightly, settling his elbows on the thick armrests.

“Hi, Davey.”

He brightened, turning toward the familiar voice.

“Hi, Anita. Nice to see you.”

“You t—” she gasped when she saw his face. _“Ay_ _Dios mío_ , Davey, what _happened?”_

He ran a fingertip over the swollen knot on his brow bone, licked self-consciously at his split lip.

“I had, um, an interesting day at the office.”

"Did somebody _do_ this to you?” Anita’s hands were curled into small, outraged fists on her broad hips.

“It’s... a long story.”

“You gonna call the cops? You want me to call the cops for you?”

“No, really, it’s nothing—just a misunderstanding." He laughed. "You could even say I threw the first punch, in a manner of speaking.”

Anita’s _tisked_ incredulously.

“Please, I... don’t want to talk about it,” he said, deflating into the padding of the chair.

Anita nodded and rubbed at her forehead, as if she could smooth down a perpetually frizzy hairline as easily as a cat’s hackles. “Okay. Okay,” she said.

Davey nodded, relieved. Nurses were good at knowing when and when not to push. Unlike doctors, one of whom had just arrived, swooping in and swiping his chart away from Anita.

“Hello, Mr... Holliday? David Holliday?”

“That’s me.” Davey glanced at Anita, who shrugged and wobbled her hand in a so-so gesture behind the doctor’s back.

Great. A rookie.

Davey dug his nails into the armrests against the uncharitable thought: everyone had to start somewhere.

“You work here at the hospital, David?” the doctor asked as he readied the IV drip, gesturing at Davey’s scrubs.

“Oh, nah. I like to wear them whenever...” he plucked at the fabric and gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Well, I guess I just like to blend in.”

“Sure, gotcha,” the doctor said vaguely, pulling down Davey’s collar to access his IV port.

He closed his eyes, drifting as he sat, waiting for the bag of clear poison to empty itself into his blood. He would feel fine for the rest of the day and most of the next, then the aftereffects would hit, hard, and he’d be lucky if he could make it to the mailbox.

It was time to start wrapping things up with Detective Riley and his friend—Harold. He’d been working with them for just over four days now and there wasn’t much left to do, really. When he left the hospital he could go and get the finishing touches put on before bedtime, probably. Certainly his client would rather it was done sooner than later, but Davey had insisted upon total autonomy, full creative license. He always did.

Discretion: indispensible. The detective’s friend—Harold—had been distressed while rattling off his aliases, some of his friends’ names, the details of some illicit project involving a machine—cameras and microphones, sounded like. Horrified at himself, but helpless to stop. Something about the subway and a bear, a Samaritan and saving grace. That was good; Davey liked Biblical references. It showed his subjects were getting into the right frame of mind, he felt. Solemn. Subdued.

He had tuned out the rambling confessions for the most part—this wasn’t a fact-finding mission, after all—preferring to concentrate on his work, the flavor and tone of speech rather than its content. His client was interested in pain, specifically that of Detective Riley, as inflicted vicariously through his friend. From what Davey had gathered his client didn’t even know or care about this friend’s—Harold’s—name. And he sure wasn’t interested in some _machine._ It was some sort of revenge kick. A bit boring, to be honest.

What _wasn’t_ boring was the extraordinary circumstances Harold brought with him; the pure gift of him. He was tailor-made for Davey’s methods, and that made Davey feel particularly proprietary about the confessions. However intriguing, they were really none of his client’s business. It was a sort of special, privileged relationship he had with Harold—like with a doctor or priest, Davey felt.

He really should reassure Detective Riley on that point the next time they talked.

He shifted in the chair, careful not to jostle the IV running into his chest. He had considered attempting a similar hepatic artery drip on Harold, but had opted for one of the standard forearm sites. No reason to get fancy, not on this job. It was unfortunate that he'd had to resort to chemically-induced rapid detox at all; he would have much preferred to let Harold's withdrawal happen gradually, organically. The body had good reasons behind its own rhythms and patterns; always best to let Mother Nature set the pace. Rapid detox was faster, but also more excruciatingly painful and the chemical shock alone could cause long-term side effects. It would be a shame if any of those happened to Harold. But Davey's own body's rhythms had taken precedence; between chemo sessions he just didn't have enough good days in row to do everything exactly how he wanted.

The morning sunlight from the window threw his hands into stark relief, shadowing deeply the bony fissures of his joints. He let out a long, soft breath through his nose, which whistled slightly from the swelling. It was even more regrettable that he wasn’t at full strength for this job; that he lacked the weight and coordination to do everything _perfectly._ He felt he had compensated adequately through other means — most especially by taking every advantage of Harold’s unique qualities: metal and scars, old pain and chemical dependence. 

Thinking about Harold had made Davey’s neck tense up in unconscious imitation. He let his head fall back, turning the final steps of the job over in his mind.

There wasn’t much left to do, and yet somehow it felt like there was _everything_ left to do—the heart of the matter, some vital thing still to discover. He had searched himself long and hard, worried it was merely a personal wish to draw out the experience, this last and best achievement. Such self-indulgence would have been unprofessional, totally unacceptable. 

No. It was something else, something deep. He was sure he’d know it when he saw it.

 

_o\O/o_


	9. Congruity

_o\O/o_

 

 

_. . . ._

_“This is about the Machine, isn’t it. Please. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”_

_. . . ._

 

For a second that stretched in his gut like free-fall, John thought Slim was playing a trick on him—that he’d somehow pieced the words together and overlaid them digitally onto the video’s sound file. The voice was so small and rough that it could have been anybody’s, really, and after all John could see only the back of Finch’s head where it hung prone in the Rig’s dark webbing. No way for him to see whether his friend’s lips had actually moved or not.

Slim’s purpling face told John this footage was fresh—six hours old, tops. The angry red on his cheek, brow, and mouth had cooled to darker colors and spread. The scabbing on his split lip was tight and dry. But the smudges of black, courtesy of a pummeled nose, had yet to appear under his eyes. Slim looked bad, but he’d look a lot worse in another six hours, John thought with satisfaction.

Six hours. Finch had been alive, moving, _talking,_ six hours ago. Four, more likely.

Talking. Talking, and telling Slim anything, everything. John had hoped Finch’s paranoia, his soul-deep secretiveness, would last until John came for him. But he’d known it couldn’t last forever. Because _everybody_ broke. Sooner or later, everybody broke. It wasn’t always a direct result of the pain itself, or the fatigue, or the panic. It was the way those things warped reality, muddied your mind and your senses and your _self,_ until finally you forgot why you were even supposed to keep the secret in the first place. John was trained to withstand pain, of course. But even more importantly, his teachers had taught him, brutally, how to stay _focused._ How to _remember._

Slim’s only response to Finch’s earthshaking confession was to rattle the Styrofoam cup he’d brought, breaking up another big chunk of ice chips. He shook some out into the palm of his hand and bent down to hold it under Finch’s mouth, like offering feed to a pony. Finch took the ice greedily, crunching it, drooling and coughing occasionally from swallowing too fast.

And in between mouthfuls, Finch was trying to tell Slim everything.

“It started when the towers—”

“Sooner or later they would’ve found _somebody_ to build it—”

“—Nathan, oh God, _Nathan_ —”

When the ice was gone, Slim wiped his hand thoroughly on the thin green fabric covering Finch’s shoulder. The wetness spread, meeting up with the vine of new sweat creeping down the center of Finch’s quivering back. Slim began fiddling with one of the restraints where it was lashed to the metal prongs of the Rig.

“—put it on a train, _a train,_ of all things, like a damn Ayn Rand novel—”

“—but it escaped—a sudden switch to Asimov, you might say, _ha,_ and a most welcome one, I assure you, _ha_ —you see, I made it capable of—”

The strap released with a _zing_ ; Finch yelped as the sudden slack sent his arm flopping down with a jolt. He gasped, breathless. John found himself muttering “stop, Finch, no, _stop_ ” under his breath. But Finch had already started whispering again.

“—couldn’t let them have it—”

Slim was crossing to Finch’s other side.

“—couldn’t let them _hurt_ it—”

With a flick of his fingers Slim sent Finch’s good leg plummeting as well. Roughly tumbled off-balance, Finch cried out in desperation.

 _“I don’t know!_ I don’t know if we can save it—”

Quiet as a ghost, Slim had moved back up toward Finch’s shoulders. Long bony fingers combed gently through the thick scrub of hair on the top of Finch’s head, then wound in tight.

“—but we’re _trying_ , oh God, I _swear_ we’re trying—”

Finch’s other arm was let down and he wailed as his bad hip, the only limb left bound, took the full stretch of his weight, nothing but Slim’s grip in his hair keeping him from strangling in the collar.

“—let me go, please, and I’ll take you—”

“—under, underground, underground—”

“—we’ll let you—”

Slim sprang into action. Finch’s confessions were cut short; he could only gasp and moan as Slim bustled about, rearranging his body and reknotting the straps. Finally, when Finch was flipped over and trussed to hang supine, Slim paused and stepped back. John got his first clear look at Finch’s face since Slim had wheeled in the Rig. His mouth hung open, throat working, his whole face crumpled around eyes wet with pain—above all, the profound anguish of a powerful mind which found itself unable to _understand._

_“Why... why...”_

The words escaped Finch like air from a tire, no upward inflection, no expectation, barely a question.

His face was grey under the raw irritation of stubble and the rough scrub he’d given himself with the bathing cloths. His eyes were red, not just from tears but from long hours suspended in air, the drag of gravity. That thin skin around his temples and brows—always so strangely fragile—looked almost swollen enough to burst.

John’s eyes raked Finch’s form with a clinical eye. He’d dropped some weight; where his shirt was pulled tight from the straps, his chest and belly were flatter than his soft, sturdy little body was supposed to be. Some of that would be from dehydration, which from the look of his skin wasn’t _too_ bad yet—he was still sweating and salivating, which was good. John wondered if the ice cubes were made from some sort of electrolyte drink rather than plain water. He hoped so.

It’s what he would have done. More efficient.

The precious glasses dangled on his forehead, just a few hairs away from falling. In the beginning of their partnership, John had wondered why Finch always wore glasses, when laser surgery—the best laser surgery money could buy, no less—would have solved any number of potential risks and inconveniences, especially out in the field. But he’d understood immediately the first time he saw his employer without them, woken up from a dead sleep by John’s hand on his shoulder with a development in a case. Bare, Finch’s eyes were huge, expressive—memorable. The little threads of muscle in his thick eyelids twitched visibly, vulnerably, whenever he moved them. Finch didn’t blink often, and when he did it was slow and purposeful—like punctuation to the prose of speech or the poetry of thought.

And so, like anything else memorable about himself, Finch had done his best to hide them.

Right now, everything about those eyes was _wrong_. The pupils were fixed and tiny; the wide rings of blue around them, usually clear and bright, were dull and cloudy against the scleras’ mottled pink.

John wished Slim would put the glasses back on.

But Slim was busy elsewhere. As he adjusted Finch’s ankle cuffs he hesitated and wrapped a long hand around one bare foot, then the other, squeezing thoughtfully. Then he loosened both cuffs and lowered the straps slightly—easing blood flow, John realized. Again Slim cradled one of Finch’s bare feet, rubbing it in strong, firm circles, rotating the ankle gently, pushing and pulling at the metatarsal tendons, rolling each toe between his fingers. Color began flowing back into the pale skin, especially into his bad foot, where the toes had been bright white, heading toward blue.

Finch had gone silent. After long minutes spent warming up Finch’s feet, Slim glanced toward the door and tilted his head, considering. Then he bent to untie his own shoes. He stripped off his thick white socks, scrunched them up and rolled them neatly onto Finch. He gave each foot one last brisk, scuffing rub between his palms and stepped back.

Finch’s eyes came back into focus, and an instant later he was laughing. Not the low, brief chuckle of his normal—if rare—laugh. This laugh was high and cracked, harsh like Finch’s voice got after a spate of gunfire startled him through the earpiece, and he had check in to confirm John was still breathing.

Slim turned away from Finch to hide his own smile. He glanced up and shrugged at the camera—at John—obviously not quite sure what the joke was, but pleased to have done something amusing. Then he turned back and dialed the arm restraints out so wide that the frantic laughter turned to a babble of empty clicks deep in Finch’s throat.

After some final adjustments, Slim stood still where his shadow would fall over Finch’s face. Finch was quiet now, pliant, eyes heavy-lidded and idly wandering around the room. Slim watched him, waiting patiently for the glazed blue eyes to meet his own. Then he refitted Finch’s glasses, slid a hand down to his sternum, and pressed.

Finch’s eyes blew wider and wider as he was bowed further and further in half, until finally there was a small _crack_ —more a visible pop in Finch’s body than an actual sound—followed by two quieter crunches in quick succession. John surged forward, gripping the sides of the TV screen. Finch’s face was split open at the mouth, lips curling, every tooth visible. John knew, but couldn’t actually hear, that Finch was screaming. He couldn’t hear it—he couldn’t hear _anything_ —over the sound of his own howls.

The screen went black and John was left alone with the echoes of their mingled cries. He doubled over and darted down the hall, barely making it to the toilet before vomiting a bellyful of soured white protein shake. It seared his throat, raw from yelling. The rough cement gritted into his knees with each retching spasm, the heaves which rattled through him long after going dry. Gradually he realized they had stopped and the sounds he was making were only feeble whimpers, echoed back to him from the toilet bowl. He turned to lean his wet cheek against the cold pedestal of the sink. He wanted to curl up on the floor, let the soreness in his eyes overpower the lingering nausea and sink him into sleep.

Instead, he rose to his feet and took a handful of icy water from the sink to rinse his mouth. There was a little mirror hung at eye level. The red eyes and drawn skin he’d expected. But he’d also expected to see that familiar fire in those eyes, that vengeful tension. But the man in the mirror wore a look of defeat; he looked old and soft and _done._ John shook himself. This was not him. _This_ was not _him._

He’d been dutifully disciplined during captivity, just as they’d taught him to be in the service. He drank shakes and water regularly, slept as well as he could. Slim had graciously provided a towel, razor, and bar soap, so John had shaved and spot-bathed at the sink, laundered his shirt and socks and underwear. Kept himself warm and ready for action: burpees and shadow-boxing and _virabhadrasana_. Finch would need him strong, alert, and looking as civilized as possible when the crucial moment came. There might be civilians to schmooze, or guards to dupe, between him and Finch. It wouldn’t do to descend on them looking like the wrath of God, so John had kept his hair combed and his shirt tucked.

The green scrubs lay untouched on the arm of the leather chair.

John studied himself in the mirror, wiping one last smear of vomit-scented saliva from the corner of his mouth. It had been a long, long time since the sight of violence had drawn any _physical_ reaction from him stronger than a curled lip. He’d smashed skulls to pulp, scooped his bare thumb into eye sockets, sent electricity through writhing bodies at voltages high enough to leave their hair smoking—he’d watched Kara do all that and worse—and all without a twinge of nausea. That softness was no part of him. It never had been. His superiors had praised its absence. He hadn’t needed desensitizing; something fundamental was broken inside of him but they had called it strength.

He rinsed his mouth again. And again.

This wasn’t supposed to happen to him.

Then again, this wasn’t supposed to be happening to Harold.

This obscenity, this bloodless dissection.

He cleaned his teeth with the brush and paste Slim had left for him. A shave, too, he decided. When he was nearly done, one last, sudden retch sent his razor-hand sideways. A spot of red bloomed on his jaw. John ignored it.

He returned to the TV corner. The screen had gone from black to blue; warmed up again and ready to start at the beginning. John sank into the chair, dizzy, his stomach spent and sore. There was a light, falsetto trembling running through his abdomen and jaw, but his hand was steady when he picked up the remote control and pressed _play._

_o\O/o_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra big thanks for this chapter to StrictlyReading for all her help and ideas! :)
> 
> Reviews are sunsets and lollipops!


	10. Unity

 

 

_o\O/o_

 

“A little... macabre, aren’t they?” he’d said, rotating on his heel in the middle of the gallery. “I was expecting more melting clocks.”

“Salvador Dali’s mother believed he was the reincarnation of her first son, who had died,” Grace explained. “One night, she took him to his brother’s gravestone and told him so. He was five years old. And he believed her. You might be a little macabre, too.”

“Why would she think that?”

She shrugged. “Grief can do funny things to people. Superstition, too—it _is_ interesting that the elder Salvador died the same month this Salvador was conceived.”

“They gave him the same name.”

“Yeah, they did. Like I said, you might be a little macabre, too.”

Finch turned away from her to study a painting of a twisted, faceless figure with unruly dresser drawers for a chest.

“Well, from the looks of things, I’d say the idea didn’t entirely agree with him.”

She’d slipped an arm through his, pressing against him soothingly. “Maybe we’ll skip the Bacon exhibit.”

They’d gone to see Rothko, instead. He was unprepared for the purity, the _impact,_ of the paintings in person. He found his breath hitching, his pupils dilating to absorb the flood of color. Grace’s shape and warmth retreated subtly from his periphery: an artist’s deference to a novice viewer.

One painting in particular drew him: it was only a study, smaller than the others, in an unassuming palette. He stepped even closer, until the long pale gradations were all he could see. It reminded him of Iowan winters, how the icy gray of distant snowclouds bled smoothly into frozen farmland, barely a smudge of delineation at the horizon.

Finch found himself thinking of those winter skies again as he dangled in Armstrong’s trap. He felt the same swoop of giddiness, the same wavering limbo between earth and sky. Here, both the ceiling and floor were painted the same wan institutional color, and he’d already lost track of gravity’s reassuring tug some time ago. In this room, **_F g _**no longer equaled **_G(m 1m2/r2)_**. It was relativity beyond Einstein’s wildest nightmares.

His older brothers — much older, already teenagers when he was born — had taught him during an early winter how to roll a perfect snowball; how to spit into the dry powder to pack it, make it stick. Merciless to each other, they’d been unfailingly — some might say unnaturally — kind to their puny little brother. 

Except for that one impromptu swimming “lesson.” A well-meaning if idiotic _faux pas_ which was never repeated. Finch had told Detective Carter he’d been nine when his twin brothers, sparking on the feedback loop of each other’s reckless energy, plopped him into the local pool to see if he could swim. That he’d actually been barely four at the time was hardly relevant to the point he was trying to make, and she might have misunderstood. After all, they’d pulled him right back out again. He didn’t want her thinking they were _monsters._

Besides, he had _asked_ them how to swim. That he’d been interested in the theory rather than the practice had, understandably, quite escaped their notice.

“Not everyone’s an athlete,” their father had thundered afterward at his big, shamefaced boys. It was the only time Finch could remember seeing his father deeply, genuinely angry. “He’s not like you two. He’s _different.”_

They had nodded and apologized, then dashed away to go punch each other over whose stupid idea it had _really_ been.

Three years later, Finch’s mother and father could only wonder whose stupid idea it had been to swim so far out into the river during a flood year. College juniors home for the summer, already tired from a day in the fields, they’d told their dad they were going to go cool off before dinner.

“Maybe Richie’s bad knee went out,” Dad had said to Mother as she sat in the kitchen, staring dry-eyed at two plates of cold beef casserole. He squeezed her shoulders. “And then, his big brother tried to save him...”

“Or maybe they were just bored,” she’d replied, picking at loose flakes of yellow laminate tabletop. “Not exactly a carnival around here.”

Fiercely competitive as they had been, Finch privately thought a reckless race to the opposite shore was more likely.

They’d never know for sure, of course.

 

 

_o\O/o_

 

_John was sitting in the Library, reading and waiting for Finch to come back with dinner. Soft, warm leather against his back and in his hands. He’d chosen the book for its beautiful antique cover, but the story had turned out to be pretty good, too. Something about paleontology._

_He heard footsteps on the stairs, smelled garlic and tomato sauce, and smiled. But the smile faded—the footsteps were wrong: too even, too long. And the smell: Finch knew John didn’t like peppers on his pizza—_

“Wake up, Detective,” said a soft voice.

John didn’t flinch; he kept his limbs loose but poised, let his eyes fall open smoothly, already alert and focused. As if he’d never been asleep; as if Slim’s presence meant nothing to him. But he couldn’t help the reflexive swallows against a mouth suddenly brimming with saliva. He could _feel_ the fragrant heat radiating from the flat white cardboard box held practically over his head.

Slim smiled at him and shook the box gently. “To celebrate,” he said. Then he picked up the TV remote. “I think you’ll really like this one, Detective.”

  

_o\O/o_

 

At MIT, Finch had authored more than one anonymous op-ed for the school paper _._ Most buzz-worthy had been his treatise on thermodynamic entropy: an impassioned defense of the Gibbs equation against the older and more accepted Boltzman version. It wasn’t just because Gibbs’s was more relevant to machinery than Boltzman’s, while applying equally well to physical chemistry. It was the _elegance_ of the thing.

As it was in fashion, literature and art, so it was in science and mathematics, Finch had found: some people just had no _taste._

If he could rewrite that article now, he would pull in a third application: entropy’s implications on the philosophical, personal scale. Loss, impermanence, decay. The ancient, existential, _human_ fear. He felt that now, he’d be uniquely qualified to do so.

He’d had the nightmares just like most people: teeth coming loose, skin flaking off, that sort of thing. The usual.

But after the surgeries, those nightmares had taken a rather more personal turn. As he slept he would feel surgical screws stripping their threads, his hip socket clanging like a poorly hinged door. Titanium plating shrieking loose, leaving his pelvic wing a mess of empty drillholes. Delicate pins expanding slowly like ice freezing in rock, spreading a fine network of stress fractures through stony blocks of vertebrae.

Now that it was all actually happening, bit by bit under Armstrong’s hands, Finch was distantly impressed with his subconscious for rendering those sensations so accurately in the dreams. Hard, bony fingers were currently at his lumbar region, squeezing and tapping to gauge how far the hardware had been worked loose.

Finch’s glasses were working loose, too. The collar still held his head firmly in place, but his skin was a slick of sweaty tears over facial muscles bunching and hollowing to the rhythms of Armstrong’s touch. Inch by inch, the heavy round lenses had dragged the frames backwards over his forehead. Finally there was only a wayward tuft of hair between them and a fatal plunge to the concrete floor. Finch tried not to breathe. He didn’t think he could bear the sound of shattering glass just now. Right before they fell, Armstrong’s hand appeared to save them.

And then, between one blink and the next, Finch must have fallen asleep. Because when he looked back up, the blurry figure had resolved into someone else entirely. Taller, stronger, darker.

Finch shuddered all over with shock, with relief.

“Mr _Reese?”_  

 

_o\O/o_

 

“Look how he relaxes when he thinks it’s _your_ hands on him. What _trust.”_

John ground through his second slice of vegetarian pizza, peppers and all. _Energy,_ he told his stomach, which was roiling with garlic after days of a liquid diet. _Just energy. To find him, take him away from there._

“I miss that, sometimes,” Slim went on, wistfully. “The trust. The _gratitude_. I helped a lot of people, you know. Before. But then it turned out hurting paid much better than healing.” He raised wet red fingers to his mouth and sucked. “It’s a funny old world.”

John had found himself kneeling on the floor a heartbeat after hearing Finch say his name. Fortunately the thick rug had cushioned the fall; the last thing John needed was a pair of swollen knees slowing him down. He slumped against the filing cabinet, square metal handles digging into his ribs, his neck. His head echoed with the sound of his name, warmth and wonder suffusing every crack in Finch’s hoarse voice. Slim had pretended not to notice, and politely handed him a napkin.

John hadn’t bothered to get back up. He sat on the dusty rug, neck craning up to watch the screen where Finch hung pliant under busy hands. Next to him, Slim sat cozily in the plump armchair, knees drawn up boyishly.

 _Pizza and a movie,_ John thought dully. _Practically a slumber party._

“He tries so hard,” Slim said. “Look how hard he tries to _endure_ it—for you.”

Finch’s face had gone white and calm—almost meditative with submission, the effort of yielding to a slow erosion of his bones without struggling or crying out. Now and then a gasp would escape him.

 _“Sorry, Mr Reese,”_ he whispered each time _. “Sorry.”_

Sometimes he asked questions.

_“This is a... test? Of some kind?”_

_“Or... are they listening, watching us, right now?”_

_“I told them too much, didn’t I? I know I did. I couldn’t... seem to...”_

_“Oh dear, did they find it? Is it all over? Are they... oh dear, are they_ all _dead?”_

But mostly he kept quiet. Or mouthed silent words.

_“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”_

Slim’s cobweb-soft voice tickled in John’s ear. “Maybe someday the world will be a better place, Detective,” He heaved a sigh of contented melancholy, and reached forward toward the pizza box. “Not soon enough for you and me, though. Or for him.”

Without taking his eyes from Finch’s face, John lunged to a half-crouch, closing his fingers around the ulnar and radial nerves of Slim’s wrist. The man yelped and recoiled, only increasing the pressure and wringing out a louder cry. John held him there while his other hand spread flat and possessive over the cardboard lid. He slid the box over the floor toward himself. Now darkening with spreading spots of oil, the cardboard was still warm against his hip. He let Slim go.

 _Energy,_ John thought. _Energy._

  

_o\O/o_

 

Before he’d left Iowa for good, Finch stopped at the graveyard. It seemed like someone should. His father wasn’t going to be visiting there any more—even if he were to suddenly remember, the old folk’s home wasn’t big on field trips. It was possible his mother would at some point, but his latest round of electronic snooping ( _just one last time,_ he’d lied to himself) had placed her in Sarasota, working at a hospital. Not a lot of time for traveling.

Like most parents, Finch’s father had sometimes mixed up his kids’ names. Maybe a little more than most, but it never occurred to them to worry. They’d tease him about it. He’d laugh good-naturedly, call them by the cows’ names on purpose.

But then the twins had died, and it got worse. Rapidly. It hadn’t hurt Finch’s feelings; he assumed being assigned lost siblings’ names was merely proper procedure — just another of those strange grownup grief-things. It certainly hadn’t seemed any more bizarre than putting his brothers in boxes down a hole under a rock.

So, he became three names. Then two—his original forgotten. His mother left before his father finally narrowed it down to one.

Finch didn’t blame her. It had dawned on him gradually — year by year in the way of childhood realizations — that for people of his parents’ generation a third child at the age of 41 was likely to have been... unexpected. Too risky, if nothing else, especially in the age of sock hops and poodle skirts. He imagined the pregnancy and birth would have been difficult. He didn’t blame her.

He knelt on the frozen ground, wondering if maybe he should have brought flowers. They’d only have shriveled in the cold—but that was _logic_ talking, and experience had taught him that when logic happened in places like graveyards, it was usually the kind of logic other people would call “heartless.”

Not expecting the sudden (illogical) urge to _see_ the names, Finch wiped away the powdered snow, then dug his fingertips into the grooved letters, picking out the ice. Forget flowers; he wished he’d brought gloves.

Under the ornate, stony scroll of the family surname, Finch read the carvings for the last time:

  

Rest in Peace,

RICHARD & HAROLD  
1943-1966

 _“...and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.”_  

 

_o\O/o_

 

John had always had a gift for seeing things other people didn’t. When he’d enlisted, the military fitness tests put him in the 99th percentile for visual acuity. But it went deeper than that. Seeing well wasn’t much good if you didn’t know where, when, or why to _look_. There was seeing, and there was watching, observing, _understanding._

John’s brilliance of perception was a big part of why the boys from Langley had come knocking in the first place.

So there was really no good reason for John to doubt what his eyes were telling him: that Finch’s legs hadn’t moved in the past forty minutes. Not a single shift, shiver, or twitch.

Forty minutes ago, there had been a Noise. Slim had been rotating Finch’s bad leg at the hip, and he’d pushed one palm by slow increments into the small of his back until there was a long, low, metallic creak. Slim held the position until Finch’s well of self-control dried up and he’d screamed through a throat that shouldn’t have been able to scream anymore. Then something _slipped_ and he’d sagged, wandering away for a little while.

When he wandered back, he seemed a little more lucid. And a little less pained. And his legs hadn’t moved since.

 _“Mr Reese. John. If they’re making you... oh God, if they’ve put one of those heinous_ things _in your head... I want you to know—I want whatever part of you that might still be comforted by the knowledge, to know—that it’s all right. Remember that. Whatever happens. It’s all right.”_

_..._

_“I'm sorry for Sameen. I'm sorry for Joss. I'm sorry for Jessica.”_

_..._

_“Or... if they're_ making _you and you’re trying to... to_ stall, _for a chance to escape, for Detective Fusco or Miss Groves to find us... Please, I... appreciate the effort, I do, but... I’d really rather this be over now. If it’s all the same to you. I would. Truly. John? Please.”_ Finch closed his eyes _. “I know you can make it quick. I want it to be over. Please.”_

John closed his eyes, too, but only briefly. He didn’t want to see any more, but it didn't matter what he wanted.

Slim paused the footage, the frame happening to freeze just as Finch’s eyes opened and his gaze slid over the camera. John knew he wasn’t really looking _at_ it; at this distance he doubted his friend’s naked eyes could detect the camera as even an anomaly of color. Still, it comforted John to imagine they were face to face. Finch was squinting, the pale rims of his eyelids rising steeply out of the deep shadows around them.

There was a strange expression there—something soft and... _pleased,_ of all things. It took John a minute to place it: the freeze-frame had captured the very moment when shame gave way to relief, dread to acceptance. It was the face of confession.

_“I want it to be over. I want it to be done.”_

“Do you know, I think this development is actually making the whole process easier for him?” Slim said brightly, profanely. “Him thinking I’m you. Didn’t have the heart to put these back on.”

A glint of reflected light drew John’s eye: a beam through the thick lenses of Finch’s glasses. Slim twirled them happily between his forefinger and thumb. Tiny dots of tomato sauce speckled one round lens.

“It probably wouldn’t have any effect on the delusion — he’s way too far gone for that — but just in case...”

John turned his head very slowly, centering Slim in his stare, his eyes still half-lidded. Slim’s smile flickered; he had time to fold one of the earpieces before the glasses were _gone_ and being tucked tenderly into John’s breast pocket. Slim blinked and flexed his fingers cautiously, counting them—apparently he hadn’t known John could move quite _that_ fast.

Slim flushed and opened his mouth, then closed it again and began bouncing the remote control against his thigh. He cracked his knuckles, then his shoulder, before pressing play again. John watched him out of the corner of his eye. A snaking vein was pattering fast and blue under the thin skin of his temple. Slim was squirming in frustration; when he finally gave in and turned to glare at him, John was ready with a milk-bland expression, eyebrows raised in innocent inquiry. Slim flushed even redder and threw a burning look at John’s breast pocket.

John bared half his teeth at the other man — the slanted mock-smile that had never once fooled anyone.

  

_o\O/o_

 

Perhaps this was all much simpler than he’d imagined.

Mr Reese was of an exceptionally curious nature, but the ex-op had his pride; _who are you?_ was a question he’d only allowed himself to vocalize once. After that, he’d only ever asked it with his eyes, with his smiles—and with the extraordinary efforts he’d made to unearth Finch’s secrets.

Truth be told, private person though he was, inconvenient though it became, Finch had found it a little flattering.

But that had been in the very beginning. Finch rather thought their shared experiences since then would have eclipsed any lingering sense of inequity Mr Reese might feel. What was a false name (or twenty) between people who had risked their lives for each other a dozen times over? Surely John couldn’t possibly feel that Finch didn’t trust him _now_.

But perhaps that was heartless logic talking.

“Is it... is it _me_ you want to know about, Mr Reese?” Finch asked timidly. They were taking a break from neck rotations, increasing slowly in circumference until the stressed metal pins felt ready to break through skin. He tried to look his friend in the face, but his eyes kept wanting to roll back into his head; they felt slippery inside their aching sockets. It was very disconcerting. “I assure you my past is not remotely interesting enough to warrant all this fuss. But if you really want to know...”

The pain blared loudly, another crescendo, smothering his mind of thought. It came in waves now, the pain. It was strange; now they seemed only vaguely connected to the rhythms of Mr Reese’s continuing attentions. Ebb and flow, wax and wane, systole and diastole. In between the peaks, it didn’t even hurt anymore, really; mostly he just felt cold there, in the valleys. A great relief, obviously, although something in the back of his head kept insisting this wasn’t an entirely positive development.

The wave crested, then diffused into tingling foam.

“There now. Let’s see. Whistler you know, of course. And Swift, Gull, Crane, Crow... and let’s not forget Partridge or Burdett. Or Egret, much as I’d like to—Miss Groves didn’t give me a _hint_ of warning, _no_ time to prepare. “Criminal mastermind” has never been a part of my repertoire; I won’t be winning any awards for that performance, but looking back I suppose it was adequate.”

Another swell; he felt his fingers curling into claws with the force of it. Afterward his left hand wouldn’t open up again.

“Cardinal, Tern, Jay, Quail. Apologies if you know any of those... already... my memory... it’s become a little... um. Sparrow. Plover. Piper. Lark. Oh, oh—Grebe! I was terribly fond of Grebe. He was a menswear tailor. A smidgen shy of bespoke, I’m afraid—I never could _completely_ abdicate choice of color and fabric to the client. But the fit was always exact, I assure you. ...More than once I was tempted to adopt that identity permanently. Give up the Numbers, the Machine, the city, everything. But then we never would have met, John. And that would have been a shame.” 

 

_o\O/o_

 

“It’s almost over now, Detective. I’ve kept you both too long. Sorry. I was waiting for... something. Something _special_ , between me and Harold, there in that room. I don’t know what. And I never will, now; we’ve gone overtime, and I’m sorry.”

Slim rubbed at his head. He sounded weary and pained. His face was pale, clammy; his mouth pinched as if chewing on something sour.

“When that screen lights up again, it’ll be a live feed. Now, the next part you’re not gonna like. But I need to be _sure_ you don’t try to chase after me—or mess with my stuff upstairs. You won’t want to waste _any_ time getting to your friend. You understand?”

John swallowed. “I won’t, I promise—you don’t need to—please—”

Slim waved a hand. “I believe you, Detective. I do. Mostly. But it’s too big a risk. You’re too good at—well, everything.” His thin lips curved into an affectionate smile. “You should take it as a compliment. Anyone else and I probably wouldn’t bother.”

“Please, don’t. I’ll go straight there—wherever you say. He’s had enough. He’s been—”

Slim’s heavy forehead sank down over his eyes, casting them completely into shadow. His voice, still quiet, had gone tight as a tripwire. “Oh, there’s no such thing as _enough_ , Detective. That’s the difference between you and me. You’re good, but you’re... utilitarian. Take my client: you got what you needed from him, and then you threw him away. But for me... there’s no such thing as _finished_. There’s only running out of time.”

John hung his head and didn’t answer. Slim had already heard him beg; he didn’t need to see the tears, too. Slim withdrew to the stairs.

“When it’s done, I’ll show the camera an address. Then you’re free to go. Goodbye, Detective. And thank you. It’s been... well, I don’t know how to describe it, really.”

There was a loud creak as Slim paused on a bad step, nearly to the door. His breathing was a little wet, his voice trembling.

“Um. Take good care of him, okay?”

 

_o\O/o_ 

“Robin.

Weaver.

Warbler.

Drake.

Swallow.

Bittern.

Heron.

Thrush.”

  

_o\O/o_

 

 _“No cologne, no Prince Charming shampoo, and_ definitely _no fucking Old Spice. Smells are memorable; scent goes straight to the limbic system of the brain. Smells can sneak right around corners and give away your location. I lost a partner once because her Herbal Essences deodorant made her sweat smell like fruit salad on a hot day. Me, I like Arm & Hammer detergent; Vaseline lotion; Ivory soap. Simple. You’re a spy now, Reese. Just because you’re out of fatigues doesn’t mean you’re going to the prom.” _

_Kara had run her eyes all over him, flashed him her shark’s smile. “You wanna keep wearing all that hair gel? Just make sure it’s unscented.”_

Of course, Slim _would_ use an aggressively vanilla soap. (Finch probably wasn’t going to be enjoying his ice cream cones any time soon.) And, of course, he had given John the same. John rubbed some toothpaste onto his shirt and hands to cover the saccharine smell, brushed a big minty dollop of it deep into his tongue and molars.

Slim’s hair was thin, coarse, buzzed short. John kept ruffling up his own, every so often wetting it just a little with some bottled water—he didn’t want to keep making trips to the sink and risk missing even a second of the live feed when it started.

Slim always went to Finch in nothing but his green, short-sleeved scrubs. John didn’t care if he had to sprint to Finch through New York’s summer fever, or swim to him across the Hudson: he was going to keep his expensive suit intact and appear to Finch conspicuously layered in his customary white and black.

Slim had neatly trimmed, smooth fingernails. John’s had gotten a bit long during his captivity; he used a corroded corner of the steel filing cabinet to roughen them up even further. He hated the idea of putting even the smallest scratch onto Finch’s abused skin, but if it helped Finch’s abused mind realize who he was—and who he was _not_ —it would be worth it.

That he and Slim both had big hands, clever and strong, callused from hard work—well, there was nothing John could do about that.

  

_o\O/o_

 

 “They were a lot flashier when I was young, you know. Peacock. Merlin. Oriole. Good lord, _Parrot_. Foolish of me. _Hardly_ inconspicuous. The first—the very first—was Falcon. Nobody knows about that one. Nobody except you, now. You see? I do trust you, Mr Reese. ...Mr Reese?”

The room was silent. How long had it been silent? He opened his eyes. If Mr Reese was still here, he was hiding outside Finch’s periphery. And being very, very quiet. Such subterfuge would be entirely consistent with his abilities and character. So Finch decided to keep talking. Just in case.

“I never lied to you about it. Remember? I only said to _call_ me Mr Finch—the _mister_ being a courtesy you never did extend, I might add—and then you followed me to my dreary cubicle, and you assumed... I never _said_ my name was Harold. I never lied.”

Finch closed his eyes again. He liked it better, imagining Mr Reese was there. It let the montage of memories play more clearly, too.

“It wasn’t his fault. He loved me, I know he did—very much. And in the greater scheme of things, that makes me very lucky, doesn’t it? He was so kind, so very dear. I’ve never known why he settled on Harry’s name in the end. He called me Richard too, Richie sometimes, in the beginning. She didn’t use my name much either, afterward; it just confused him. I was ‘he’ and ‘him,’ and ‘our son’ for a while, to her. And then ‘your son.’ And then she left.”

His eyes snapped open, suddenly hot with fury. This had gone quite far enough.

“It was so long ago. What can it possibly matter now? It doesn’t _mean_ anything. I don’t know why you care—you _shouldn’t,_ because it’s _nothing,_ and it doesn’t _matter.”_ He puffed out his chest as much as he could. “Not to _mention_ it’s none of your damned business.”

He was bouncing a little in his straps. The metallic squeaks reminded him of seagulls. He snorted.

 _“Falcon,_ though. Imagine! Ah, the folly of youth. Although, in my defense, _Star Wars_ had just come out.” 

 

_o\O/o_

 

Watching as the Rig’s hydraulics slowly stuttered Finch down to the floor, John stood still and held his breath. Somewhere, at this very moment, Finch was blinking, and pursing his lips in that _Finch_ way, and making little noises of surprise as his back and shoulders made contact with the floor. Somewhere, right now, Finch was breathing in and breathing out, pale, underweight, and damaged—but _alive._

 _Right now,_ John thought, bouncing on the balls of his feet. _Right now._

When his full weight was finally laid flat, Finch let out a long, guttural groan. The hum of the hydraulic cut out and the Rig’s arms bounced to a stop, jingling. In the sudden stillness Finch’s eyes were wandering, still fixed and hazy, a little frown between his eyes. John knew how utterly surreal solid ground felt after days of dangling.

Finch made no attempt to move, to shed the web of loose straps from his arms, or pull the sweaty collar from his neck.

 _Shock,_ John thought. _It could just be shock._

Finch’s hoarse voice, when he spoke, was still miraculously wry and crisp underneath the rasp.

“It’s nothing against _you,_ Mr Reese. It’s nothing personal. You understand that, don’t you?”

Slim had moved closer and squatted to unstrap the wrist cuffs, and Finch leaned toward him subtly, licking his white, chapped lips.

“And I’m sorry that I lost my temper,” he confided. “The truth is... it’s not a question of secrecy, of _privacy,_ at all. I just... don’t like talking about it. More accurately, I _haven’t_ talked about it. Ever. I don’t know that I can _,_ you see. It hurts,” he gasped. “It _hurts.”_

Slim released Finch’s ankles, then delicately unhinged the collar and lifted it away, revealing pink, puckered skin. Finch whimpered at the loss; suddenly exposed, the fragile skin broke out in goosebumps. A shudder rolled from Finch’s head to his arms and down to his hips—where it stopped short. Slim was rocking him back and forth to ease the loosened body sling out from under him. Finch squirmed at the shoulders a little, but John couldn’t detect any flex in his legs. They flopped back and forth, at once flaccid and stiff, like an old garden hose unspooled. When he was entirely free of the Rig’s restraints he lay inert with an unnatural liquid flatness on the floor. He wasn’t even trembling anymore.

Slim packed up the Rig and rolled it out the door. Finch whimpered and wormed when he left and then when he returned, Finch _reached_ for him. For a split second Slim stood still, a mix of surprise and hesitation on his face. Then he took the offered hand and knelt, gathering Finch up in his arms. He sank into a full sit to pull Finch’s weight more securely into his lap, the tableau like some sort of blasphemous _Pietà_. Finch’s head fell to the side, forehead pressing into Slim’s thin chest.

“Please, don’t make me say it,” he whispered into Slim’s shirt. “I haven’t said it since he forgot... he loved me. That’s all that matters. He loved _me._ Don’t make me say it. Please.”

With his free hand Slim petted his hair. Those gaunt fingers were now impossibly gentle, ghosting along the aching seams in Finch’s skull, pressing into knotted jaw muscles. Gradually the tears dried, and Finch sighed.

“Does it really mean so much to you, John?”

Slim stroked his head one more time, and then his arms loosened abruptly; he pushed Finch out of his lap and onto the cold floor.

“No,” Finch keened. “No, don’t leave.” His fist latched weakly onto Slim’s sleeve. “Don’t leave. Please.”

Slim gently detached Finch’s fingers, and rose to his feet.

“Oliver!” Finch burst out. _“Please,_ John! It’s _Oliver!”_

Slim froze.

“Oliver. Oliver Man... Manson. My name is... my name was Oliver Manson. My name... my _name_...”

Glowing with triumph, Slim stood over Finch, watching with reverence as the secret drained out of him like blood.

Then he bent over and rolled Finch onto his side with clinical efficiency, slipping a hand between Finch’s ribcage and the floor. He threw a dark look up at the camera as he hooked his fingers into the softness under the bones and palpated firmly, searchingly. Then he stilled for a split second before his whole arm stiffened and he drove his hand like a spade, deep into Finch’s abdomen. He rotated at the wrist sharply, like twisting a stubborn door handle, and withdrew. Finch gave a dull grunt and then quieted again, unmoving.

Slim leaned over his knees for a moment, rubbing at his own ribs where John had bruised him to the bone. Pulling a piece of notepaper out of his pocket, he straightened. As he unfolded the note with shaking hands, John could see dark slashes of ink bleeding through the back of the paper. It looked like Slim had terrible handwriting. John blinked, ready to take a snapshot of the address.

Suddenly there was a crackle of static and the sound cut out. Slim’s head whipped around toward the door just as it burst open and two men marched into the room. The shorter one trained a gun on Slim and spat a few brusque words. The taller, younger man wiped his nose and tossed his shaggy blond hair. He sauntered across the room; Slim shouted and fought, but the blonde strong-armed him effortlessly out the door and slammed it shut behind him — hard enough to send vibrations up to the camera.

Finch startled at what must have been a tremendous noise. His mouth was mashed all but flat against the floor; John could just barely see the edges of his lips moving, a stripe of spit spreading onto the concrete. Whatever he said made the gunman smile. He lowered his weapon and turned to face his associate, glancing at the camera and jerking his head toward it. The blonde took a small black switch out of his pocket and aimed it straight at John’s eyes. The gunman loomed over Finch’s prone form. He stuck out a foot and rolled him onto his back.

The screen went dark.

 

 

_o\O/o_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Sorry for the delay. This chapter was really REALLY hard to write. As always, comments are so helpful and would be much appreciated. :)
> 
> Extra special thanks to my partner in crime, angst, and whump: StrictlyReading! Couldn't have done it without her. :)


	11. Impact

 

_Warning: Chapter contains a mention of implied past rape of non-canon characters. Very vague and non-explicit._

 

_o\O/o_

 .

John stared at the dark screen, crackles of static growing quieter and quieter as the television cooled. His mind played and replayed the images in a continuous loop.

The gunman: a titch below average height, dark hair starting to thin. Light on his feet for all he was thickset and powerfully built. Good aim, steady hands. Square jaw and sleepy eyes.

Professional. Dangerous.

The blonde: Young, tall—strength without discipline. Impatient plucking at his dark clothing, which was brand new and scratchy. Rounded shoulders that slouched under a soft, mean, childish face.

Temperamental. Dangerous.

He didn’t recognize them, didn’t think he’d ever had any meaningful contact with them. By the tenth iteration he was sure of it: he didn’t know them.

Slim did, though. His snarl as the blonde hauled him from the room had been the rage of _betrayal,_ not the shock of ambush.

So: the men outside the door, guarding the room, verifying Slim’s check-ins. The boss man’s—Slim’s _client’s_ —hired help. Who were now, it seemed, under new orders.

A breach of contract.

On a separate loop, the rumpled sheet of notebook paper was folding and unfolding, instant-replay origami, in Slim’s hands. The blue bleed of ink getting darker and sharper until—until it was gone, dropped to the floor and tromped underfoot when the blonde had grabbed Slim by the arm.

John shook his head, trying to shelve that image to make _space_. Holding escape routes from unfamiliar places in one’s head, firing bullets with pinpoint accuracy through wind, walls, _other bodies_ —all required superlative spatial awareness and a flint-sharp memory. Gifts which had saved John’s life countless times, but which were now only slowing him down with a desperate, futile examination of those blue slashes from every angle, compensating for reversals and folds and tilting. Searching for a hint of the address Slim had scrawled there.

A third loop: the gunman’s curling smile at Finch’s wet mouthings against the concrete, the angle too oblique for John to guess at the words (his lip-reading had only ever been fair at best). That curling smile—then the casual nudge of a black running shoe against Finch’s shoulder. Rolling him over, belly up.

Then nothing.

The distance and position of the basement door behind him, just a short stair flight away, was etched with perfect clarity in his mind. If he had a gun, he could have sent a bullet through the keyhole without turning around. Not that he would need to; the door was no obstacle, had never been the barrier. _Those men_ were the barrier, and now the chains were off: they were close enough to Finch to _touch_ —an intolerable fact. But now John's chains were off, too.

So: stay below and hope for the screen to light up again, or go above and tear through the house for clues?

John’s mind and nerves and limbs begged for action, for escape. His gut told him to stay.

He compromised. The door splintered under a firm kick, and John got a glimpse of a messy kitchen: warping orange linoleum, dishes in the sink, a dark stain of electrical fluid under the old, olive-green refrigerator. He turned his back on the doorway and trotted halfway down the stairs again, eyes locked on the empty TV screen, mind full of images from the worst loop of all:

Slim flashing a look of warning at the camera as his deft fingers probed under the left side of Finch’s ribcage. Then a fist, a sharp thrust deep into the upper abdomen. Internal injury: insurance against John coming after Slim. The spleen probably, bad bruising, a slow bleed at worst—there was only so much damage a bare hand could do against soft, yielding tissue. No broken rib to graze an organ, no blunt force impact to shock the entire cavity. A long countdown. A slow fuse. Enough time.

Except Slim had meant for John to leave right away. Slim had meant for John to be coming for Harold _right now._

John’s palms itched. He couldn’t stop swallowing.

Three minutes. Five.

_Gun, blonde, blue ink, black shoe. Finch’s squinting eyes, confused mouth. Soft stomach, hard hand._

Ten minutes. Twelve.

_Reaching arms. Quiet legs. Oliver._

Sixteen minutes—

From somewhere up in the house, a heavy door creaked and banged, opening. Footsteps staggered toward the basement.

“Riley! Riley! _Detective!_ Come _on,_ we need to _go...”_

Instantly alight with purpose, John mounted the stairs and walked toward the pained voice approaching him at speed. His firm, deliberate pace didn’t waver as his body effortlessly absorbed Slim’s frantic forward momentum and pushed him backward, against the refrigerator, forearm to his throat.

“Where is he?”

Slim was a babbling, cringing wreck under his arms.

“They’ve got him, I couldn’t stop them, I told them that this isn’t how I do things, but I _couldn’t stop them._ Come on, let me go, we need to _go,_ they’re gonna wreck _everything—”_

“Do you have any guns?”

“—all that work, ruined, just... thrown away, all for somebody’s cheap, _disgusting_ idea of—”

John backhanded Slim across the cheek and then shoved him back up against the fridge. It swayed ominously, its contents sloshing, magnets skittering onto the floor.

“Do you. Have. Any guns.”

“What?—No!” Slim’s nose wrinkled in revulsion.

John swiped two paring knives out of the brimming sink and spun Slim around toward the front door.

“Take me there.”

Slim nodded in relief and took off in a limping run. John stashed the knives in his sleeve and hip pocket and followed him out onto a wide Craftsman porch, down painted cement steps, and into the driveway. An ostensibly white but very dirty cargo van was parked there sloppily, engine idling. The sun was setting and John was distantly glad he didn’t have to cope with full sunlight after all those days underground. A jet of water from a neighbor’s oscillating sprinkler spattered his shoes as he swung himself up into the passenger’s seat.

The van was in gear before John shut his door, tires screeching as Slim threw it savagely into reverse.

“They’re going to ruin everything, _everything,”_ Slim muttered as he braked to slam it into drive.

There was an awful crash back in the van’s cargo hold; John spared a glance over his shoulder. The Rig lay there, on its side, shuddering against the back doors. Unattached to the various cables, locks and casters built into the floor and ceiling of the van, obviously designed with care to keep it safe for transport. Slim drove through a stop sign and rounded a tight corner: the Rig screamed as it scraped along the metal floor and crunched into the van’s side. John could’ve sworn he heard Slim sob.

“What happened?” John asked. “What changed? Why’d your friends kick you out?”

“They’re not my _friends,_ and I don’t know,” Slim said, banging his hand on the steering wheel for emphasis. _“I don’t know._ I called my client while I drove home, tried to reason with him, _begged_ him—”

Residential streets were giving way rapidly to bars, shops, food carts. They drove through an underpass and John caught a glimpse of rival gang graffiti on the pylons: _Cruddy 650s_ versus _Hoover Boys._ So, they were in Yonkers.

“—he said something, in, I dunno, Russian maybe. He said it three times, real slow—”

“What did he say?”

“I look like I speak Russian?!”

“You say he said it three times. Think. What did it _sound_ like?”

“Okay. Yeah. Uh. Tray... no, _Trah._ Trah-da-door. Flay-osh-ka. Shoo—”

“— _Justiţie,”_ John finished bleakly, ice collecting deep in his gut. “Not Russian. Romanian. _Trădător fleaşcă justiţie.”_

Viktor. Victor Enaşca. A minor player in the Romanian weapons-smuggling ring whom he and Kara had hosted for a weekend in an empty freight train on the outskirts of Bucharest.

 _“Vik-TOR_ trădă-TOR,” _Kara had punned at him, taunting, her Romanian serviceable but less than poetic. “Enaşca_ fleaşcă.”

_Viktor the traitor. Enaşca the coward._

_When he finally crumbled and gave up the names they needed—names of various higher-ups in the food chain—she had loomed over him, flecks of dried blood in her hair, knife poised._

“Trădător fleaşcă justiţie,” _she’d whispered. Justice for a traitor; justice for a coward._

Slim’s voice broke through John’s thoughts, brought him from that dark metal box back to this bright metal van.

“—and then he mentioned some, um. Unpleasant things. That happened to his daughters—or maybe his sisters? Whatever, I don’t remember, something like that. Certain, ah," he made a vague gesture with one hand, "violations. Back when... after you and he, uh, met. His friends didn’t like him talking to you, I guess—”

Slim’s voice faded again, along with the rumble of traffic and the crashes of the shattering Rig behind them. There was a muffled ringing in John’s head, and then all he could hear was a grinding cacophony of clunks and rattles, vibrating up through the floor and dashboard.

Slim’s van _really_ needed a tune-up.

 _If this heap breaks down before we get to Harold I will feed you to its overheated engine and hold the hood down on your melting body until it goes cold,_ John thought uselessly, stupidly. It wasn’t as if Slim needed any extra motivation.

“Fuck off, it's fine, it’s a Honda,” Slim snapped.

Apparently he’d said at least part of that out loud.

They took a speed bump at double the limit and John’s molars rattled. The little yellow car-fresh tree dangling from the rearview mirror spun like a thing possessed and John caught a whiff of vanilla.

Slim’s phone was in John’s breast pocket, nestled against Finch’s glasses, where he’d stowed it after pickpocketing the man as he panicked in the kitchen. John slipped it out and held it up.

“Call him again.”

Slim blinked at it and threw a reproachful look at John.

_“Little busy here.”_

“Fine.”

John redialed the last outgoing number and pressed speakerphone.

“Hello, Davey,” said a humorless voice, tired, barely a strace of an accent.

“Hello, sir. This... this just isn't _right,_ sir. I gotta… I must reiterate my objections—my very,  _very_ strong objections.” Slim sounded rehearsed, nervous, like a kid in a school play, afraid of forgetting his lines. “I find this, um, totally unacceptable, unprofessional, inappropriate—and you know what? Downright _trashy._ I hold myself to a higher standard, and you promised me full creative license, total autonomy, absolute, um, proprietary—”

“Yes, yes,” Viktor said impatiently. “I’m in violation of our contract. So you can keep the deposit. Use it to take a vacation—you deserve it. Find somewhere warm to die. Thank you for your services. Our business is concluded.”

“Is your business with Detective Riley concluded?” Slim interjected sharply. “He’s listening right now.”

A pause.

“Really.”

A pedestrian gave them the finger as they made an unsignaled turn.

“I see.” He didn’t sound so tired now. “Hello— _John.”_

“Please. Stop this. Just stop this, and you can have me. Don’t hurt him any more. Please.”

“Please. _Please,_ he says. That's... very funny.” He didn't sound amused. “And I _already_ have you.”

“You do. You’re right. I’m yours. This is between you and me. I’m the one who hurt you—”

“This isn’t because you hurt me. This is because, afterward, you let me go. The woman, she wanted to end it, remember? But you stopped her. _‘He’s just a pawn,’_ you said. And she smiled, and patted your face, like she wanted to humor you. She liked you. Beautiful lady. You hadn’t let her fuck you yet, I think. I’m sure you did, eventually.”

Viktor paused. Soft ripping noises were coming through the speaker: the unmistakable sound of an orange being peeled. The foamy _pop_ as the center pith was extracted; the wet _snick_ as the sections were pried apart. When he spoke again, his words were slick with juice. John's stomach growled traitorously.

“Anyway. My associates in Bucharest were not sympathetic men,” Viktor continued. “The burns, the blood, the bones you broke—these did not inspire their compassion. It was not enough for them, not sufficient _penitenţă._ And so my family was made to pay a price, too. My beautiful, _preţios_ girls.”

Sixteen minutes, John was thinking. Slim had made the drive in sixteen minutes. Finch had been so close, this whole time, so close. He and Slim had been driving for ten now. They were so close. Whatever Viktor’s men were doing to Finch, they would only be doing it for another five minutes.

_Five minutes, Harold. It’s almost over._

“You don’t have a family, do you, John?” Viktor mused. “That was discouraging. Very limited options: your _brută_ of a partner... or the pretty shrink with the red hair...”                                       

A sharp longing, hot and guilty, lanced through John’s belly. _It would have been better… it would have been easier…_ anyone _else..._

Finch would be appalled.

John didn’t care. His skin was too hot, too tight, his throat convulsed around an agonizing tumor of unshed tears.

“But something told me that this man, this quiet little _profesor,_ was the one. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

“I’ll kill you,” John said weakly. “I’ll finish it this time, I swear to God I’ll do it, I will find you—”

“No, I don’t think so. But that doesn't really matter. For you, things will never be the same now. _He'll_ never be the same." Viktor chewed and swallowed, spitting out a seed. His voice dropped confidingly. "He might not be able to look you in the face for a while. Maybe not ever again. It'll be interesting to see, won't it?"

The phone beeped cheerily: _call ended._

 

_o\O/o_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAA I KNOW I AM A TERRIBLE PERSON SORRY
> 
> I promised we'd get to the rescue proper in this chapter, but these darn things just keep getting longer and longer to write and I thought most readers would prefer a shorter update sooner??
> 
> DON'T HATE ME


	12. Delicacy

**CHAPTER 12: Delicacy**

_o\O/o_

 

It turned out that a knife was the only thing John needed, after all.

“How many?” he asked Slim as they drove past an array of warped chain link fence and into the small wasteland of an abandoned construction site.

“Five,” Slim replied, sucking his teeth. They skidded into park, and Slim started prattling again, launching into the sales pitch he’d been making ever since Viktor Enaşca had disconnected the phone call.

“Hear me out—I can help him, fix him. I’d consider it an _honor_ in fact, if you'd let me—”

John didn’t answer, only took Slim by the elbow and with his other hand eased the knife’s blade out of the shadows.

“Come out this way, on my side,” John said. “You’re going in with me.”

“Well _of course_ I am, Detective,” Slim huffed, offended.

They left the engine running. The sun was almost down; there were no streetlights nearby, and the low huddled shape of the unfinished building was dark as well. Naked steel pylons, never adjoined to a second story, rose out of each corner like tusks.

Slim was not built for stealth; he didn’t know how to walk quietly on gravel. And then he started whispering.

“I think you’re really underestimating the restorative powers of therapeutic massage, Detective. I admit I’m a little rusty, but—”

“Quiet.”

“No, just, _listen:_ There’s nobody who can do a better job putting him back together—”

“Be _quiet.”_

“— _nobody._ Please. I want to have one last—”

Slim’s foot slipped noisily into a pothole, and the still night air exploded with gunfire. John dropped to the ground, yanking Slim down with him, searching for the source. But there were no muzzle flashes, no bullets hitting the ground around them. They weren’t the targets, and the shooters weren’t outside.

They were inside the building. The building where Finch was.

 _“What the hell is this?”_ John shouted hoarsely.

Slim shook his head, bewildered, the air knocked out of him from the fall. He pointed to something ahead of them, near the building: a dark sedan, engine idling, parked at an angle near a door.

“Not one of your crew’s?”

Slim shook his head again, gasping.                  

John rose to a crouch, pulling Slim up by the collar and waistband and shoving him forward in front of himself: a shield. It might take him longer to find Finch’s room if Slim got shot, but he’d make do. Slim didn’t protest.

They rushed to the heavy metal cargo door next to the idling sedan, its reinforced steel lock nothing but a melt-edged crater. John recognized the damage immediately: a grenade launcher. Someone—someone who was not _him_ —had brought a _grenade launcher_ inside the building housing Finch.

“Not a sound,” John breathed in Slim’s ear, and slipped them silently through the door into a wide, dark hallway. Linoleum floor, cheap drop-tile ceiling: clearly just one hallway among many in what was doubtlessly an echoing, institutional maze. Hundreds of doors, and probably not a single window.

The shooting had stopped. There was a wheeled cabinet parked a few yards in and John ducked behind it for cover. Incredibly, Slim managed to follow him without so much as a squeak of his sneakers.

A faint blue light suddenly cut through the darkness, pouring out through one of the doors ahead as a short figure eased its way out into the hall. Expert: lithe and silent despite the small arsenal it carried beneath dark clothing. John caught a glimpse of pale scalp shining through a tight buzzcut.

Someone else was inside the room where the light was shining. A voice drifted out into the hall: flirty, musical, _familiar._

“I get it, I do: your boss doesn’t like it when you talk to strangers. But the thing is, we’re here. And he’s _not_. And we’d really, _really_ appreciate it if you could help us find _our_ boss. Little guy, glasses, suit worth more than a small car?”

Silence.

“No? Aw. That’s a shame. Well, bye!” A lilting laugh cut through the air followed by a single gunshot.

The figure in the hallway stiffened in what was clearly a full-body eyeroll, then said in a scratchy female voice,

“Seriously, Root, are you _on_ _something?”_

Root stepped into the hallway and crowded against the small shooter, who turned toward her squarely, refusing to budge.

“Just high on you, babe. Mm, you smell gooood.”

The tiny _cluck_ of John’s mouth falling open was all it took for Root and Shaw to whirl toward him, guns raised.

“Come out slow, hands up,” Shaw rasped.

“Yeah, what she said,” Root grunted.

“It’s me!” he called, putting his hands out where they could see them. He felt suddenly loose and lightheaded with a feeling that was almost—but not quite—relief. “It’s Reese!”

The two women made their own sounds of surprise and lowered their weapons as John slowly unfolded himself into view.

“Uh, is there a _reason_ you didn't bring a gun?” Shaw asked, voice heavy with disdain.

A long, angry scar ran from temple to nape on one side of her shaved head. A shorter, older one was set above it at a steep angle. She was bulkier than before: even through her dark, weapon-padded clothes John could sense a harder, squarer core.  Thickened lats, traps, deltoids. Her stance and carriage were grimmer somehow; like she couldn't take the ground under her feet for granted anymore; like she was digging a foxhole with every step.

Shaw smirked, gratified by his wary appraisal.

“You look like shit,” she told him.

The smile disappeared fast when John hauled Slim into view and her gun snapped up again.

 _“Who’s that?”_ she hissed.

“One of them. He’s going to show me where Finch is.”

“And you… trust him.”

“About as much as I trust you,” John jabbed, and a ripple of something soft went through Shaw's face before it hardened up again.

“She’s fine,” Root broke in, defensive and shrill. “I saved her. She’s not with Samaritan anymore. I _saved_ her. _We_ saved her. She’s fine! She's…” she broke off, dazed eyes staring into distance. "She's…  _magnificent."_

Shaw rolled her eyes, looking like she didn’t care too much for the word “saved”, but didn’t comment.

“Okay, then,” John said coolly. “I guess that’ll have to be good enough for all of us.”

And just like that, it was.

Slim led the way deep into the dark labyrinth, stumbling and incautious. They met no resistance for several minutes, and when they rounded a fourth corner John just managed to yank him back by his collar before a spate of bullets peppered the wall behind them. Shaw and Root flew to the front while John urged a terrified Slim forward under their fearless, flawless cover.

It was all so familiar: a shadowy blur of gunfire and shouting; Shaw and Root a perfectly orchestrated duet of destruction; John’s focus honed in pure and sharp on the mission’s Objective—a Number, usually.

Familiar, but also strange: there was no gun in his hands, light was reflecting bizarrely off Shaw’s bristle-grey scalp, and Slim… Slim was no Number.

The frantic man pointed to the third door ahead on the left, and as soon as Shaw and Root had pushed their two remaining opponents past it, John dragged him toward it. Before they reached it the door suddenly opened on its heavy hinges and a slouching figure emerged: the big, young blonde. The door shut behind him as he turned to cringe away from the fight and then John was on him, pinning him to the wall, knife held to his throat.

“Give me an excuse,” John whispered, and neatly transferred the gun from the other man’s waistband to his own.

Slim had caught up and was busy tapping a code into the door’s electronic lock panel. It buzzed peevishly at him and John growled, his eyes unwavering on the young man’s dull and skittish face.

“S-sorry,” Slim said, wiping his sweating hands on his shirt and reentering the numbers. It buzzed again.

“They changed the lock!” he fumed, casting an injured look at his erstwhile colleague.

John bared his teeth, pressed the blonde harder against the wall, let the blade of the knife sink minutely into his soft throat.

“Open it,” he said.

“I—I can’t—” the blonde whispered. “Please, you don’t understand, I _can’t_ —”

John tilted his head skeptically, let the knife sink in a little deeper.

“He’ll _kill_ me!” the man bleated. “You have no idea, the... the terrible things, what he makes us do, _forces_ us, or else he’ll—and not just me—my family too, my _mom,_ he’ll—”

John pressed the palm of his hand against the lying mouth, hard enough to create an air seal. Then he lowered the knife and slid it, slowly, into the groove between hip and belly. He was prepared for the resulting throes and screams and contained them easily with his body.

“Right now all you have is a bad cut—and a hernia,” John said gently, as the blonde snorted out desperate puffs of air through his nose, his eyes starting to break out in tiny red lines. “Nothing a few stitches won’t fix. But that can change.” He gave the knife a little wobble. “Now _open it.”_

John spun him around, crushing him face-first against the wall next to the code panel. The blonde hiccuped and whimpered, then reached for it.

“Please,” he sniveled as he typed, “please, he made me—made _us_ do it... had no choice, I swear, _please—”_

John would have memorized the code, just in case, but the buttons were getting distractingly wet and red— blood on the blonde’s hands, layers of dry and fresh across his palms and knuckles; a fine spray down his bare forearm...

The lock snicked open.

From behind him, John felt Slim stealing the gun from his waistband, registered eight different ways of stopping him in the split second it took Slim to lift and aim.

But he did nothing; just watched as the blonde’s soft face stretched rigid with animal terror and then disappeared in a flash of fire and smoke.

John took the gun back, kicked the bleeding corpse into the doorway as a prop, and stepped over it into the large room. The light flickered on automatically.

And there was Finch, a rumple of white skin and green cloth, lying face-down by a wall. His face twitched toward them at the sound of the door, one bloodshot eye appearing and straining to bring them into view. A folding metal chair lay on its side, broken, near the opposite wall. John took a brief second to clear the room, sweeping the gun muzzle from corner to corner, and in that instant Slim had blown past him, running to Finch’s side—

“—Oliver! Are you all right? Oh, I’m so sorry, Oliver. Oh, I had no idea, I would never—”

— _reaching_ for Finch, almost close enough to _touch_ —

John whirled, caught Slim around the waist, and _ended_ him with an easy twist and a quiet crunch.

Finch’s visible eye blinked, flicked up toward John and then back again to Slim’s body as it wilted slowly against the floor.

“Oh,” he said.

John cast the body aside and knelt down by Finch’s head, close but not touching, putting both his hands flat on the floor where Finch could see them easily. His eyes stung: it hurt, physically _hurt,_ holding himself back even this short distance.

“Hey,” he said, very gently. “Hey, Finch. It’s John.”

Finch was still staring at Slim’s body, unblinking, pupil dilating and shrinking visibly.

“He talked,” he said.

“Shhh. Hey, it’s all right, I’m here now.” John shifted, blocking Finch’s sightline to the corpse behind him. Finch continued to stare, seemingly right through him.

“How did you make him talk?”

Finch’s face was bloody, a curtain of red from nose to chin, startling against his pale skin. A shallow pool of it had spread out onto the cement underneath. Above them on the wall there was a trio of red smears at face-level. John moved a hand, slow and deliberate, waiting until Finch looked at it.

“I’m going to check you over now, okay?”

Finch thought about that for a moment, blinking slowly.

“Okay.”

“Don’t move, though. Okay? It’s just me.”

“Okay.” The eye dropped shut. “Just you.”

John didn’t see any blood in Finch’s hair, but he ran his fingers softly over his scalp to check for swelling. Satisfied, he moved his hands lower, holding his breath and praying that all he’d find was a nosebleed. Gently, he insinuated his fingers between Finch’s face and the floor, feeling for damage. Everything checked out: Finch’s other eye was intact, there were no gashes in the skin, no broken jaw. Finch took it quietly until John eased two fingers into his mouth to feel for wounds or missing teeth. That drew a low whine from him, and his eyes screwed up tight.

“Easy, Harold,” John said, pulling back to rest his hand weightlessly against the back of Finch’s head—no pressure, just the lightest of touches against the spikes of Finch's hair, creating a warm cushion of air between the scalp and John's hot palm. “I’ve got you. It’s over now.”

As if on cue, a final spate of gunfire sounded from outside and a familiar voice approached, swearing a blue streak. A series of squishy thumps echoed through the hallway: presumably a gauntlet of inconveniently-placed corpses that needed kicking out of the way. Footsteps stopped at the door and John rounded on it, gun drawn so fast Shaw gave him an impressed little “huh” before holding up her hands.

“What the fuck, Reese?” she spat.

“Stay out, Shaw. You’re not touching him,” John said evenly.

“Like _hell_ I’m not,” Shaw snapped, tilting her head to get a look at behind John. Her eyes widened and she surged toward them. John cocked the gun.

“Come one step closer, Shaw, I swear to God—”

“Mr _Reese!”_ Harold rebuked, his voice suddenly crisp.

“ _Harold,”_ John returned. “Trust me—you’re probably confused—she’s been with Samaritan this whole time—”

“I recall what happened perfectly well, thank you, Mr Reese.”

Root appeared at the door, her eyes wild as a spooked horse’s until they found Shaw standing with her hands up, all black leather and indignation. Despite the tense tableau between her three comrades, a beatific smile spread over her face and she clasped her chest, overcome.

“Like old times!” she trilled, misty-eyed.

They ignored her.

“He needs a _doctor,_ Reese,” Shaw rasped warningly.

John made a low, miserable noise and found it was the only response he could muster.

“Mr Reese,” Finch said, very quietly. John's head twitched to the side slightly, the better to hear. He wanted to turn, to look at Finch. He wanted to so badly. “John. Let them come in, now. We need their help. Please." John made the noise again. "You’ve done enough,” Finch whispered.

His arm dropped, the gun clanking clumsily against the cement. The knot of doubt in his gut turned to water and he bowed over at the waist, shameless. He managed to creep a hand toward Finch, seeking out the thin skin of his wrist, the flutter of living blood underneath.

“I’m... I’m quite at a loss,” Finch was musing as Shaw hurried toward him. “Which isn’t to say I’m not happy to see you, Miss Shaw. _All_ of you. In fact I—”

“Shut up, Harold,” she said, kneeling next to him and shouldering John to the side. “What hurts most? Can you roll over?”

“I’d... really rather not.”

“We shouldn’t move him,” John interjected, dragging himself around to hover over Finch at Shaw's side. “I don’t know how we’re gonna...” His voice, high and thick, cut out for a second. “His back. That fucking bastard broke his back, Shaw — he _broke_ his _back._ We could paralyze him, Jesus.”

“I think that might be overstating the gravity of the situation somewhat,” Harold drawled, and damned if he didn’t sound like a professor chiding a misguided student.

“I watched him _take you apart,”_ John burst out, then bit his lips together. Finch didn’t need to know about that. Not yet.

“Well,” Finch said, swallowing. “Well. I’m sorry you had to see that. But. Be that as it may,” he went on, drily, “it’s _my_ back. And this is not, as they say, my first rodeo.”

“This isn’t _funny_ , Harold, and you’re in _shock_ —” John stopped abruptly and turned to Shaw, his grip on Finch’s wrist tightening. “And he’s bleeding inside, shit, I forgot—”

“My left side, Miss Shaw,” Finch said helpfully, talking over John, frighteningly calm. “Mr Armstrong was nothing if not precise, however; I doubt the danger is imminent—”

“Shut _up,_ Harold,” Shaw hissed again, slipping her hand under Harold’s shirt, between his belly and the floor, and pressing gently. “Yeah. Spleen. I feel the swelling, but his abdomen’s a long way from rigid. He might need surgery, sooner the better, but we’ve got time. Reese, I need you to get over on his other side—hey! Reese!”

Shaw smacked the heel of her hand, hard, against John’s forehead. He blinked and looked up at her, her face resolving slowly out of the haze of green his eyes had thrown up from staring at the slick of blood on the floor by Finch’s nose.

“Go. To. His other side,” she ordered, pointing with her chin. “You’re going to support his back. Come _on,_ let’s go!”

“Let’s go,” Finch echoed, eyes falling shut, his moment of clarity leaking away. “Yes. Let us go. _Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table...”_

“Yeah, that’s really lovely, but we’re gonna roll you now, Finch. Sorry.”

“But it _isn’t_ lovely, Miss Shaw, that’s just it,” Finch interrupted, his eyes springing open and fixing earnestly on Shaw. “Eliot is elucidating the narrator’s romantic deficiencies through the very _un-_ loveliness of his language—”

“We can play school later, Harold,” Shaw said, moving to kneel above his head, both hands settling in gently around his neck and face. “Root, stop _ogling my ass,_ and get down here and help.”

“I hear and obey,” Root intoned, and dropped gracefully to her knees.

“Okay. Everyone ready? Nice and easy now.”

Finch gave a little cry as they rolled him smoothly onto his back, and then his eyes began flitting about, searching the room as he muttered under his breath. “Very _very_ nearly a right scalene,” he said, slurring. “But alas, falling _just_ this side of acute—”

Shaw leaned forward, her face hovering over Finch’s as she slipped a hand under his head and down the back of his neck, checking the alignment. John noticed some more scar tissue over her right eye; when she frowned it popped into view, throwing the blinking of that lid just slightly out of sync with the other.

“Straighten out his legs, slowly, one by one,” she told John, whose fingers had again found their way around Finch’s thin wrist. “Don’t jostle his hip if you can help it, though.”

John looked down at his own bloody hands and froze, unable even to swallow for a moment that stretched and stretched.

“Root, _dear,”_ Shaw ground out _._ “Why don’t you go out in the hall and get that big guy’s coat? Should work okay to carry him in, between two of us.”

“Mmm, I think _She_ has a better idea,” Root said dreamily, her hand at her ear, and waltzed away in a shimmer of elation and flowing hair.

Shaw breathed in and out slowly, a martyred expression on her face.

"Twenty-one hours I've been putting up with her," she breathed, before turning her attention back to Finch. He had broken off his rambling geometrical treatise and was looking up at her, eyes big and moony.

“You look very pretty upside down,” he said plaintively.

“Why Harold, you dog,” she teased, but her smile fell flat when she palpated the bridge of his swollen nose with her thumb.

“I think it’s broken, Finch,” she confessed, grimacing.

“Ah. How very unfortunate.”

John ducked his head and listed to the side, suddenly dizzy; Shaw chopped him viciously in the collarbone and ordered him to _get to work already_. He scooted sideways obediently, waiting until the last second to let go of Finch’s wrist. The transition from warm, trembling skin to the cool cloth over leaden muscles made him shiver. He ran his hands ineffectually over Finch’s slightly curled legs, wracked with visions of Finch unraveling like a snapped spring if he made a wrong move.

“Okay, not _that_ carefully,” Shaw urged. “He’s not _glass.”_

John privately disagreed, but made more of an effort to ease the stiffness in Finch’s knees.

“...not unlike the structural lines of the _Mona Lisa_ ,” Finch was rambling, his voice growing wet as blood from his nose dripped down his throat. “Though most art texts _will_ insist on labeling it isosceles: such an unnecessary contrivance...”

Shaw was trying to shush him, her hands on his face, absently running her fingertips down along his five-day beard, smoothing it out where it was matted up against the grain. Above those gentle fingers her eyes burned as they ran over Finch, taking in the rip in the seam of his bloody collar, the intermittent panting that made his shrunken potbelly quiver where it was visible between his waistband and rumpled shirt.

More and more she was looking like she wouldn’t mind a top-up on her kill quota for the day. But her touch remained soft.

Finch did eventually quiet under her hands, though he looked more puzzled than soothed.

“Mr Reese... already performed an examination for facial trauma,” he informed her, haltingly.

“Yeah well, _Mr_ fucking _Reese_ isn’t a goddamn doctor, is he?” she hissed, but her hands firmed up quickly into a more business-like grip around his head as she shifted, repositioning herself beside his shoulder.

“Harold,” she said, slipping her hands into his, “try to squeeze for me. Good. Now, can you feel this?” She pinched at his sternum, then in increments down his stomach.

_“...In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo.”_

_“O-_ kay, I’m gonna take that as a yes.” She went lower. “What about here?”

He gazed at her, a fleeting tremor complicating the muscles of his face. He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.

_“Do I dare? and, Do I dare?”_

Shaw frowned at him.

_“Do I dare... Disturb the universe?”_

“Harold?” she said. She pinched harder, at his flank, hips, the tops of his thighs. “Feel anything down here?”

He flicked his eyes downward at her hand, then up at the ceiling.

“No,” he said flatly. “Thank heavens.”

Shaw raised worried eyebrows at John, who looked away.

“How did you find me?” Finch went on soberly. “How did you know?”

“The Machine,” Shaw said simply, and Finch’s mouth caved in, trembling.

“It’s alive, then,” he whispered, a tear tracing a bright wet path through dried blood. “It’s alive.”

Root appeared in the doorway. Horribly, she was carrying some scavenged parts from the Rig: the body sling, a few loose straps, and the collar. She trotted inside, and John’s mouth went dry.

“Oops, _pardon_ me,” she said to Slim’s corpse, stepping nimbly around it.

Dangling from her arms, a metal clip clinked loudly against its grommet, and they lost Finch completely.

“No,” he said. “No. You’re dead.” His red eyes rolled, trying to get a look at Slim’s crumpled form—nothing more than a green smudge to his naked eyes. “And John broke that thing, I _heard_ it break, and he... he stopped you. John... he made you talk, and I think... I think that _killed_ you—”

He was slurring again and his pupils blew wide when he turned his gaze back to Shaw.

“And you,” he whispered, “...you died, too.”

“No,” Shaw said quickly.

“Oh dear,” Finch breathed. “Oh dear.”

John curled one hand around Finch’s again; he held up the other, fingers spread, against Root’s approach.

“We can’t use that,” John pleaded. “You don’t understand. We just can’t.”

“Yes we can,” Shaw said grimly, her hand closing like forceps around his elbow. “And we are. Now either help me, or get out.”

The sharp stars of pain from his ulnar nerve grounded him, and John started helping.

Finch closed his eyes as they rolled him, pliant and mumbling, onto the fabric of the body sling.

_“...there will be time to murder and create... and time for all the works and days of hands... that lift and drop... a question... on your plate...”_

As they trussed his arms against his sides, John pushed Shaw’s hands away and closed the buckles himself, as quietly as possible.

_“...some overwhelming question... “I am Lazarus, come from the dead...”_

“I’m not dead, Harold, I’m not, I swear, and neither are you, I’m real, I’m here,” Shaw murmured. And then she closed the collar around his neck. Finch fumbled his arms, weakly, trying to squirm away. John took his hands, stilled them with his own. Finch stared up at him.

_“...I have known the eyes already, known them all—the eyes that fix you, sprawling on a pin... when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall...”_

John and Root each took a side, counted to three, and lifted him. As he lost the floor’s support and sailed upward, suspended and dangling once again, Finch stopped breathing for a long moment.

“Oh, _oh,”_ he finally wailed. _“I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling—silent—in the seas!”_

The heavy door creaked as Shaw threw it wide for them, kicking the young blonde’s body clear and swearing savagely. John thought he heard her hawk and spit as they rushed past, out into the hall. Finch’s whimpers spurred them on through the corridors, Shaw running ahead, leading the way. Root had sobered with the effort of keeping Finch's cocooned body level as she and John rushed forward in some sort of strange, deadly version of a three-legged race.

Finally they were outside. The cold, dirt-scented night air was like a blast of heaven against John’s skin and in his lungs.

“Oh my, how invigorating,” Finch exclaimed in agreement, suddenly lucid.

The sedan was there, running and ready. Shaw ratcheted the passenger seat forward and pointed at John.

“You, him, backseat floor,” she said. “This’ll be a rough ride; we need to stay off the grid and the roads on the shadow map aren’t always smooth. You’re a shock absorber, got it? Hold him _still.”_

John caught on immediately. He snaked his way in and settled on his back, holding out his arms for Shaw and Root to lever Harold in on top of him. The jut of the driver’s console was a convenient anchor at their waists; the well between John’s chest and throat made a secure notch for the back of Finch’s head. John fitted his chin to the top of his head and actually felt Finch relax fractionally. A tuft of scrub-brush hair immediately found its way into John’s nostrils.

One of the thick straps immobilizing Finch's torso was completely unacceptably  _twisted,_ and of their own accord John's fingers scrabbled at it. Once undone, he couldn't stop, and he threw the rest of the restraints to the side and replaced them with his own arms, snug around Finch’s chest. He could feel a rapid heartbeat beginning to slow against the firm, warm pressure between them—Finch’s, his own, or both: he wasn’t sure.

“You know,” Finch murmured, relaxing another increment, “surprisingly, in light of recent events, this is actually not unpleasant.”

The car screeched into reverse, and John willed himself to become as jellylike as possible. Finch sighed.

“It was all very lonely, you know.”

 

 

_o\O/o_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, my eternal thanks to StrictlyReading for her ideas, advice, guidance, and encouragement. I couldn't do this without her and her *cyber hugs*! :)
> 
> Thanks as well to all of you who comment; I can't tell you how helpful you are. :)
> 
>  
> 
> ** Poetry quotations are from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Reviews would be so very much appreciated. :)


End file.
